


how to become the spark

by sassy_ninja



Series: manual for becoming the spark [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Developing Friendships, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Poe Dameron/Finn, Everyone Is Gay, Fluff, Gay Poe Dameron, Heavy Angst, Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Character Death, Miscommunication, Multi, Near Death Experiences, Personal Growth, Poe Dameron Hurts So Prettily, Poe Dameron Needs A Hug, Poe Dameron-centric, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Canon, Psychological Torture, Self-Sacrifice, Serious Injuries, Slow Burn, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-19 03:08:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 49,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22604176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sassy_ninja/pseuds/sassy_ninja
Summary: Poe Dameron, commander of the Resistance fleet, best pilot in the galaxy, hotshot trigger-happy flyboy, he's all of these things plus a little bit more. This is the story Poe Dameron, shy farmboy, doting son, idiot gay, soldier who tries his best not to be broken by the war roaring around him and most of all just a human in a galaxy which doesn't care about things like love, friendship and fear. This is how he breaks and how he begins to heal again and how he starts to learn what it means to be alive.orPoe Dameron's life from his childhood to the end of the war.
Relationships: Iolo Arana & Poe Dameron & Karé Kun, Poe Dameron & Jessika Pava, Poe Dameron & Leia Organa, Poe Dameron & Temmin "Snap" Wexley, Poe Dameron/Finn, Poe Dameron/Muran (past)
Series: manual for becoming the spark [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1654303
Comments: 63
Kudos: 146





	1. plant the seed

**Author's Note:**

> ok.... this is gonna be a Big One.... I'm rlly sorry for suddenly springing this on u guys but as u might b able to tell from my bookmarks I'm rlly getting into Star Wars these days oop and if u follow the forbidden twitter then u can see my lesbian ass falling deeply in love w Oscar Isaac aka the only man in the world. anyways this is a super indulgent poe centric fic that is quite literally the longest thing I've ever written (and as of writing this still not finished :0) so pls bear w me and enjoy! also title is a reference to Poe's line in tlj when he says 'we are the spark that'll light the fire that'll burn the First Order down' bc thats one of my fav sw quotes even tho some ppl hate it apparently :( anyways enjoy!

Poe’s first memory is the tree in his garden. It’s more of a mix of sensations than a real memory, just a blur of green, warmth on his skin, the high tinkling noise of bells in the wind. He holds it deep in his chest, somewhere no one else can touch.

He remembers his mother, her smile, her laugh, how her calloused hands felt when she picked him up and put him in her lap to fly in her A-Wing with her. She glows with laughter, at least she does in his head and she’s always smiling even when the doctors tell her she only has a few more weeks to live.

Poe is eight years old when he falls asleep curled in her arms and wakes up to his dad carrying him out of the room crying with big gulps. He twists around, confused and scared and sees her lying in bed, unmoving. He doesn’t know she’s dead until his dad sits him down and holds him, weeping into his hair and slowly rocking them back and forth. He doesn’t understand really until he’s ten, until then he sits underneath the tree and dreams of his mum coming back.

The funeral is just a jumble, the quickness of it all. He doesn’t even see her body again, just the smooth wooden coffin covered in pennies as it moves slowly from their farm to the village. Kes holds his hand throughout the entire thing, almost as if he’s scared that he might lose Poe as well. He doesn’t remember crying, but the candles slowly blur into a single orange mass as they lower the coffin into the ground. Strangely he remembers every single thing they put into the coffin with her: her helmet, a carved peach pit that she liked to keep in her pocket, one of Poe’s clumsy drawings of her A-Wing she kept by her bedside.

He remembers the things they keep as well. Kes gives him the ring hung on a thin silver chain on his next birthday and they keep her jacket for Poe to wrap around his shoulders when he’s feeling lost and alone. Even when her smell fades, the heavy leather is always warm and Poe can pretend she it’s from her touch. It falls to his knees when he stands up and his dad always tugs at his cheek and tells him ‘you’ll grow into it one day’.

There’s no peace when they get back home, for the weeks afterwards a long stream of people come through their house to smile sadly at them and speak to his dad in low tones over tea. It’s brewed in endless quantities until the smell feels like it’s seeped into Poe’s skin and hair. He swears that to this day that room still smells like Kes’ herbal teas even when no one’s brewed a thing.

Poe spends those weeks after running to the shed behind their house and hiding in the cockpit with his eyes squeezed shut, hoping that when he opens them, he’ll be in her lap, soaring across Yavin 4’s skyline. When he opens his eyes, he’s still in the shed alone, tiny hands gripping the controls so tightly they shake.

So, Poe grows up with his dad, an empty A-Wing and the tree in his garden whose leaves sound like bells in the wind. He cries a lot, laughs a lot more. The house may be emptier, a bit quieter, but Kes loves him enough for two parents, fusses over him enough for three, maybe even more. He tries to teach him how to cook, tells him which oils to put in his curls to keep them neat and shiny, calls in favours to make sure he learns to fly and sits with him for hours as they pore over the HoloNet and figure out how to maintain Shara’s A-Wing. Poe is loved, cared for, cherished.

He’s popular at school as well, it’s not hard to be on a little moon like Yavin 4 when your parents are local legends and you smile oh so prettily at everyone you meet. When he’s thirteen a girl in the same class as him asks if he’ll take her up in his A-Wing and he tells her that it only seats one person with a confused laugh, not really understanding why she runs off with tears in her eyes.

It’s hard to think about these things when gossip travels around town faster than the speed of light. At fifteen he overhears two people talking about Brance, the charming neighbour’s son that had moved away to a core world a year back. Poe hangs back in the shop, spending too much time staring at a can of beans just to listen.

“I heard he’s you know,” the woman waves her hands emphatically, “ _gay_.”

The man gasps and his eyes go big and wide, “but he was always so – you know what I mean – manly. He did sports, helped round the farms during the harvest – I would’ve never known.”

Poe doesn’t know what that means, but when he runs back home, he drops the bag on the kitchen table and holes himself up in his room to check the HoloNet for what ‘gay’ means. It makes him curl his fingers tight into the bedsheets when he finds out. He thinks about how the woman had said that word, how she’d wrapped it around her mouth like she didn’t want to say it out loud, like it was something bad.

He thinks about how his chest feels tight whenever he’s changing with other boys for sports, why he’s never wanted to hold a girl’s hand or kiss them on the lips. Boys on the other hand – his thoughts stutter at the idea of kissing a boy, holding a boy’s hand, leaning his head on their bare chest. He runs his hands through his hair and thinks about what it would feel like for someone else to do that, for another _boy_ to do that.

He’s quiet at dinner, thoughts still running at hyperspeed about what it means, why they talked about it like that, why being gay was so bad. It didn’t make sense, surely it was just the same as liking a girl? Kes asks him gently what’s wrong, if something happened in town and he shakes his head. It’s not exactly a lie, but afterwards the food tastes bland in his mouth and he goes to bed early. In the night he sneaks out and sits in his mother’s A-Wing, clutching the controls with his eyes closed and wishing, wishing, wishing she would come back.

* * *

When he’s seventeen almost eighteen he gets invited to a party. It’s not like he hasn’t been to parties before, but he’s been busy with his applications to the Academy for the past couple of months and this time someone has snuck in copious amounts of alcohol. It’s a thrill, he’s had a few mouthfuls of beer before, cold and bitter, but now Korr’s parents aren’t home and anyone who’s anyone in the village is there. He drinks whatever people put in his hand and there are a lot of ‘Poe I’ve missed you’ and ‘you don’t come out with us anymore’ that come with a full cup.

He drinks until he’s pretty sure the floor is shifting underneath his feet and he couldn’t stop smiling if he tried. His face kinda hurts from it, but he thinks he’s forgotten how to move his face muscles properly.

“You alright there, Dameron?” someone asks him and it’s that pretty boy from the year above him in school. He has soft hands and slim hips and his hair falls over his eyes when he laughs. It takes a moment for Poe to remember his name, Dáire.

“Yeah, buddy,” Poe grins, trying to walk and tripping forwards straight into his arms, “you caught me,” he says, surprised. Dáire laughs and his hair falls over his eyes and Poe can’t help but reach up to brush it away. Their faces are so close, maybe if he leans forwards, maybe they’ll kiss. He’s pretty, so pretty and Poe is still in his arms.

“What the kriff do you think you’re doing?” he snarls, pushing Poe backwards so his back hits the wall. It’s a shock to his system, suddenly he feels much less drunk than he was a few seconds ago. “Were you trying to _kiss_ me, Dameron? Are you _gay_? I’m not like that – I can’t believe I let you touch me – I can’t believe I touched you. That’s _disgusting_.”

Poe turns and he runs all the way down the dark path through the woods. He falls once, twice, tripping over the uneven ground, his own feet, but he doesn’t stop, doesn’t look back. His heart is pounding, and he retches in the bushes just before he gets to the clearing in-front of his house.

“Poe, you’re home early,” his dad calls from where he’s sitting on the sofa, holopad in his hands, “I thought you would be back late tonight, you’ve spent all that time cooped up in your room writing those applications.”

He stares at his dad with his greying beard and his old pyjamas and the flash of concern in his eyes that he tries so hard to hide. He can’t – he can’t do this anymore.

“Are you crying? Poe – what happened? Is that blood? Did someone hurt you?” he’s there in a second, arm around his shoulder and ready to do anything his son needed him to do, “talk to me Poe, what’s going on?”

“Dad I’m–” his voice trembles, he’s shaking so hard he thinks he might fall over and he lets himself be guided to the sofa, “I tried to – I tried to kiss someone and – I was just–” he exhales harshly, rubbing his eyes roughly with the back of his hand, “he was so pretty. I wanted to kiss him and he – he said – he called me disgusting. I just – I don’t know what’s wrong with me – why can’t I be like other people? Why do I like boys? It’s not right, I’m not right.”

Kes looks at his son, his beautiful baby boy crying in his arms and something aches so deep in his chest. He pulls him close and he wants to hold him here forever, make sure nothing can ever hurt him ever again, even if he knows it isn’t possible. His baby, his precious baby is hurting, someone else hurt him and there’s nothing Kes can do to make it stop.

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Poe,” he says slowly, trying to string his words together right, “there’s nothing wrong with that – with wanting to kiss boys. There’s nothing wrong with you, ever. You are perfect, you are just the way that you’re supposed to be – that nerf herder whoever he is – doesn’t know what he’s talking about, okay? Whoever you love, I will always love you, your mother will always love you, _always_ , because there is never anything wrong with love, do you understand, Poe?”

He presses a soft kiss onto the top of Poe’s head and holds him tight until he stops shaking and slowly loosens his grip until he peeks his head up, eyes still not meeting Kes’. He strokes his face again, soft and gentle. He’s grown up to look so much like Shara, you can tell Poe is her son from the second you see his curls and big eyes and bright smile.

“You’ve always been too good for Yavin 4,” he says softly when he walks Poe up to his room and is busy cleaning the scrapes on his knees with antiseptic and a thin layer of bacta gel, “your head’s always been above atmo and all these people – they’re never even going to leave this system. You don’t need to listen to them, not anything they say.”

Poe stays quiet the entire time and Kes lingers for a final moment at the doorway to watch his son curled in a ball in bed. He wants to make it all better, fix everything with a magic touch and oh it’s been so hard to do this alone, without Shara to do everything with him, but he’s trying.

“Thanks dad,” he hears Poe say quietly when he’s closing the door to go, and he smiles.

It’s worth it in the end. All the hardship, all the pain. He goes and sits in the shed with Shara’s A-Wing just like he knows Poe likes to do and he talks about how wonderful their son is, how brave and strong and just like her he’s become. The A-Wing of course stays silent, but he hopes that somewhere beyond, Shara is listening and smiling at how much their son has grown.

For the next few months Poe keeps his head down. He stays at the farm, helps out whenever he can, dismantles and reassembles his mother’s A-Wing until he knows exactly where everything goes without looking at his intricately hand drawn schematics, flies in it whenever it isn’t lying in pieces scattered across the ground.

He still smiles brightly at Kes, laughs with him over dinner, tries to help out in the kitchen and sulks in the living room when he gets kicked out, but there’s something different as well. When he thinks no one’s watching he stands by windows and stares out into deep space, hands fisted in the curtains like he’s trying to stop himself from flying away. He dreams about a world beyond Yavin 4 in a desperate way he never did before.

He avoids town as much as he possibly can and now that school is over it’s really not too hard. It’s not like he’s scared (but he is, maybe he’s too much of a coward to admit it) it’s just that it’s easier to stay here on the farm without people to stare at him and whisper how ‘Shara Bey’s son is… you know? _Gay_ ’.

Sometimes he can’t avoid it, like when his dad’s speeder breaks down and they need some parts from in town and Poe can’t just sit there whilst his dad makes the half an hour walk there and half an hour back, not with his sore knees, not carrying a bag of parts. So, he goes even though Kes insists he’ll be alright to make the journey, because Poe is if nothing else a good son.

The town is empty, midday heat pushing everyone inside where they can hide for a little bit before emerging in the cooling afternoon air. It’s quick and easy, just a few parts and a few credits in exchange. The shopkeeper only gives him one long assessing look and by then Poe is already slipping out of the doors and back into the muggy heat. He almost makes it to the trail back home when someone calls out his name and his stomach churns nauseously on instinct.

“Dameron – where you going in such a hurry?” he turns and it’s Dáire the pretty boy, not so pretty anymore with his biting smile that doesn’t quite make it up to his eyes.

“What do you want?” he asks back, wary and tired, one foot already edging backwards to the safety of the jungle and the path back home, “I’m just trying to go home.”

“Yeah, yeah – but come on I feel bad about last time,” he smiles again and Poe feels the ice travelling down his arms, “let’s go talk somewhere more private?”

But he and Dáire have never been friends, not before the party and definitely not afterwards, something’s not right. He takes a step backwards as Dáire cocks his hip to the side and he sees something flash at his belt. It’s a blaster. Poe doesn’t think. He turns and runs into the forest as fast as he can.

They chase him, other boys lurking in the shadows waiting to do Force knows what with him. The bag of parts bangs painfully against his legs, but he doesn’t drop it. If they catch him, he wants to put up a fight and he knows that he’s always been smaller and scrawnier. Having a heavy metal pipe doesn’t sound like a disadvantage in that situation.

They shout his name, thud down the path just behind him, but he knows this patch of forest better than anyone else and he ducks away down smaller and smaller paths until all that’s left is the sound of his heavy breathing and the heady thrum of the forest around him. The walk back home is longer and slower than it should be, but he gets back home and gives the parts to his dad, still tinkering in the shed.

“Something came for you whilst you were gone,” Kes shouts over his shoulder and it shouldn’t make Poe flinch, but it does. He’s lucky his dad is facing away from him.

There’s a big parcel on the table inside and he stops dead when he sees the New Republic Academy logo printed on it. His hands feel like they should be shaking when he opens it, but instead there’s a thrum of calm he’s never really felt before.

“Poe? Good news?” his dad asks and he’s somehow manifested at the doorway when Poe wasn’t paying attention. He holds the attached letter so hard it nearly crumples in his hand.

“I got in,” he mumbles quietly and then louder, “Dad I got in!” And they’re screaming, jumping, shouting, pulling each other into a heavy embrace and just standing there, shaking. Poe’s finally going to become a real starfighter pilot, finally getting out, finally going to be able to follow his mother’s footsteps. He laughs and shakes out the cadet’s uniform that came in the parcel, all dark blue fabric and gold embellishments.

“I knew you could do it, Poe,” Kes says a little while later when he’s helping to smooth down the wrinkles in Poe’s uniform, “but you know you’re going to have to cut your hair short, right?”

“What?” he hisses, flinching back, “my _hair?_ ”

“Don’t say you’re regretting this now?” Kes teases when he stands back to look at his son, his baby, barely eighteen and already in a military uniform. It makes his chest burn because he and Shara were always fighting for their children to have peace, but he pushes it down. They were fighting for him to have the choice as well. “You look very handsome, but there’s one thing missing.”

He goes and finds Shara’s old jacket from the depths of his wardrobe – it’s been years since Poe has needed it to comfort him – and drapes it over Poe’s shoulders.

“Mum’s jacket,” Poe says quietly, touching the soft leather with his fingers, “but–”

“It’s your jacket now, kid,” he smiles softly, “you’ve finally grown into it.”

Poe’s ‘thanks dad’ is muffled into his jacket and when they let go there’s a little wet patch neither of them mention.

* * *

Poe insists his dad doesn’t come on the transport with him. Harvest is just coming in on the farm and he can’t afford to be away for the three days it takes to get to Hosnian Prime and the three days back. He’s being a good son, a caring one, but as soon as he gets to Hosnian Prime he regrets it.

The Academy is huge, bigger than anything Poe has ever seen before in his life. The white spires reach up so high into atmo he has to crane his head to see the top and he feels a rush of vertigo in his stomach like it’s doing barrel rolls. He’s pretty sure he could fit the entire village inside just the entrance hall, probably the tallest trees in the jungle as well. A droid whisks his luggage away and he drifts without it, following the crowd deeper inside the building.

It’s not like Poe’s shy or anything, but there’s just so many people here, a thronging crowd of dark blue and everyone seems to already know someone else, talking in little huddled groups. He bounces on his toes with excitement, nerves, he can’t quite tell, his entire body is thrumming with energy. He closes his eyes, feels the cold metal of the chain against his neck and breathes deeply.

“Hey,” he suddenly says when his eyes snap open, walking up to another person standing awkwardly by themselves in the crowd, “I’m Poe Dameron, what’s your name?”

His voice and stance are filled with fake conviction, he tries to puff out his chest in a strange echo of the casual confidence his future self stands with. It looks weird on him now, like he’s still growing into it, testing things out.

“Iolo Arana,” the guy says quietly, large eyes blinking up at Poe, “what track did you apply for?”

“Starfighter pilot,” Poe grins, “only thing I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid.”

“Same, not the kid part though – I used to swear up and down that I was gonna be a Senator, but turns out that job’s actually pretty boring,” he shrugs with a laugh, “can’t imagine being cooped up in meetings all day – I think I’d start another galactic war just to get out of it.”

Poe snorts and Iolo cracks up next to him, nudging each other the way young men who have just met, but already decided to be friends do.

“You know they’re gonna make you cut off all that hair,” Iolo says a little later, after the instructors have finished saying their introductions and all the cadets are breaking up into groups to be toured around.

“Aw buddy, don’t remind me,” Poe groans and twirls a curl around his finger, “my dad wouldn’t stop teasing me about it before I left home.”

Iolo snorts again, “it’s some pretty great hair – suits you,” his eyes flicker up between Poe’s face and his hair, “but I think the short hair will be cute as well.”

“Cute,” Poe echoes quietly when Iolo pushes through the crowd to find the group he’s been assigned to and he knows his face is red. The boys on Yavin 4 never complimented each other like that, so casually, so easily, like it was nothing. They jostled each other around and tried to flirt with girls, but nothing like this.

He thinks about Iolo’s smile and Poe feels his chest burn with just one thought: ‘they never told me there would be so many cute boys outside of Yavin 4’. He has to shake his head to stop his brain from racing down that path.

It’s just their luck that Iolo happens to be Poe’s roommate, maybe he really does have pilot’s intuition, he thinks when he walks in for the first time and Iolo is sitting on the bed, fiddling with the covers. They grin at each other and don’t quite jump into each other’s arms, but they’re both from small Outer Rim planets, there’s a solidarity against the unforgiving crowds of Hosnian Prime.

“You two lost?” a girl drawls at them when they hesitate before going into the thrumming mess hall, “bet you’re both from the Outer Rim.”

Iolo bristles and Poe laughs, slapping her on the back, “and what – you’ve never left the Core in your life?”

She grins back at them, “I’m Karé Kun, nice to meet you two farmboys.”

Poe laughs, Iolo rolls his eyes, the three of them become inseparable.

Their room is always messy with the beds unmade, dirty clothes lying scattered on the floor and posters on the wall half falling off. On Poe’s side there’s a map of the galaxy, an x-wing schematic and a poster of a gravball team that he only has because the captain is really hot. There are a few holos on his desk, one of his parents, one of him and his new friends laughing together. He still has all of them now, keeps them on his desk just like this.

“So, you’ve really never kissed anyone?” Karé asks, sitting cross legged on Poe’s bed. Poe feels his stomach lurch at the question, and he thinks about that almost kiss he with Dáire, all the consequences that came with it. He hasn’t tried again since, it was easy to run from Yavin when he already had half a foot out of atmo, but there’s nowhere else to go from here.

“No – it’s not that big a deal is it?” Poe shrugs from where he’s sitting on the ground, feet pressed up against Iolo’s bed. He reaches up to fiddle with his hair, but it’s a brutally short military cut that’s barely long enough for his hair to curl at all. His dad didn’t stop laughing until he cried the first time he called home, but Iolo was right – he still looks cute. “Yavin 4 was a small place, if I kissed someone the entire village would know by the next morning.”

“Oh Force, how do I keep on forgetting you’re an actual farmboy,” Iolo grins at him, eyes disconcertingly bright in the dim lighting and Poe throws a sock at him. Really, he isn’t much better, living in a small town in Kishi, hours away from the main cities, but that doesn’t mean he can’t tease Poe about his ‘farmboy’ life apparently.

“Yeah, but you’re not on Yavin anymore and you got the whole Academy falling at your feet,” Karé carries on pushing and Iolo gives her a look over Poe’s head that he pretends not to notice and she just shrugs, “come on don’t be so boring, Poe. There’s more cute girls here all waiting to kiss you than you’re ever gonna get in your life.”

“I don’t like girls,” he mumbles, not looking up and his shoulders are rigid with tension. Iolo just sighs again and flops backwards on the bed but Karé doesn’t seem phased in the slightest.

“Cute boys then,” she says without missing a beat and Poe’s head shoots up like a blaster shot to turn and stare at her, “what – I kiss girls like every other party we have, did you think I’d be homophobic?”

“No, I just,” he shrugs, uncomfortable, “people on Yavin didn’t like it very much, I tried to keep it to myself.” He doesn’t say ‘until I couldn’t anymore and then they tried to maybe kill me at one point’.

“It’s pretty obvious though,” Iolo drawls, rolling over to face them, “whenever we change after conditioning you try so hard not to look at anyone it’s almost painful.”

“I just don’t want anyone to be uncomfortable,” he splutters, cheeks already burning.

“I wouldn’t mind if you looked at me,” Iolo says, not breaking eye contact even as his cheeks slowly start going red and Karé shrieks in the background.

“You two are disgusting I’m leaving,” she announces, jumping up but Poe tackles her with a laugh and drags her kicking and screaming onto Iolo’s bed.

When she leaves hours later, and the lights are turned off Poe’s still lying there on Iolo’s bed with their faces almost touching and he doesn’t know if he should go back to his own bed because Iolo has a hand curled around the back of his neck. They kiss, slow and soft and uncertain in the dark. It’s pretty okay for a first kiss, Poe thinks, he’s glad it was with Iolo and not some random boy he doesn’t even care about.

They fall asleep like that, curled together and it’s embarrassing in the morning, but they kiss again after they brush their teeth. It lasts less than a week, but Poe still remembers it fondly.

* * *

But then a few months into the Academy, when Poe finally thinks he’s finding his feet, Karé introduces them to her friend from her engineering class. He doesn’t hate Muran, but then again Poe doesn’t really hate anyone, not even his bullies back at home or the instructor that always makes him run laps for no real reason. He just doesn’t _like_ Muran either.

He’s just – something about him just sets Poe’s teeth on edge, like there’s something that’s just unsettling about him, so opposite to what Poe embodies. He follows the rules, doesn’t whine, doesn’t even joke that they should slack off and Poe just can’t figure him out.

So, he doesn’t avoid him exactly, he’s not running out of the room as soon as he walks in and he’s friends with Iolo and Karé as well so it would be almost impossible, he just kinda avoids him. Just a little bit.

It’s Karé that notices it first because of course it is, she stares at him from across the table when he walks all the way around to sit next to Iolo and his new boyfriend even though there’s a spare seat next to Muran. He ducks her gaze and dips into the conversation with a funny joke about Instructor Zaaj Neeb that everyone apart from Muran laughs at.

She corners him in the common room a week later when Iolo is busy making out with his (newest) boyfriend and Muran is somewhere probably in the library studying like the weirdo he is. Poe tries to escape he really does, but she pins him down with a glare and he sinks back into the empty sofa with a weak smile.

“Why don’t you like Muran?” she asks before she even sits down, grabbing his wrist before he can do something stupid like try and bolt out of the door, “and don’t try pretend that you do because you don’t.”

“Is it that obvious?” Poe groans, scrubbing a hand through his newly cut hair. It grows so fast the instructors make him get it cut every six weeks and he hates it.

“Yeah, you’re like the nicest person in the entire Academy – it’s so weird to see you not bend over backwards to please everyone you meet,” she rolls her eyes and he pulls a face at the compliment that doesn’t really feel like a compliment, “every time you look at him you squint like you’re trying to solve one of Instructor Memhi’s engineering problems and you look stupid as frag. What gives?”

“He just – I don’t know – something about him just makes me,” he shrugs again, and she pinches his arm until he yelps and continues, “there’s just something about him that feels weird – I don’t know, don’t look at me like that.”

“You didn’t even give him a chance – you’d like him if you got to know him,” she says and it feels more like an order than anything else, but he supposes it’s true. 

“I’ll try, okay?” he whines, and she finally lets go of him with a grin. He shakes his arm with a sniff and smiles a little bit, mumbling under his breath, “I can’t believe you said I’m the nicest person in the Academy.”

“Shut up,” she snaps, and he dodges the punch she throws at him, “we’re a bunch of flyboy pilots of course we aren’t nice – it’s a low bar you nerfherder, but also you’re ridiculously nice. A complete people pleaser – if someone asked for one of your spinal vertebrae, you’d probably rip it out on the spot to give it to them before they even asked twice.”

He grins even wider than before and shouts, “you didn’t even deny it – I’m not gonna forget this until the day I–” she finally manages to hit him and he squeals before sprinting away, Karé hot on his heels shouting expletives after him. The common room heaves a communal sigh as the door closes and Iolo laughs into his new(est) boyfriend’s mouth. 

So, Poe _tries_ to be nice to Muran and it’s easier than he thinks, possibly because Muran is ridiculously nice to him back and it grates him it really does. It would be easier for him to be able to report back to Karé and say he failed if Muran was an asshole, but worst of all he _isn’t._ He’s nice – honestly, he’s kinda funny in a weirdly dry and sarcastic way and he does laugh at Poe’s jokes, even the stupid ones that make Iolo and Karé boo and hiss at him, just so quietly he never really noticed before. It makes his heart flutter in the stupidest of ways.

One month later he drags Karé off to the side in the library when Iolo is in the middle of telling anyone who will listen that he’s swearing off men and Muran is very diligently patting his back and handing him tissues when he starts crying again.

“Karé I like Muran now,” he says, grabbing her shoulders.

“Poe that’s great, I knew you’d like him if you – wait why do you look like you just did ten barrel rolls in a row?” she squints at him suspiciously.

“Karé I _like_ Muran now,” he says again, eyes so wide you’d have thought he saw a ghost and gives her a little shake for emphasis.

“You kriffing nerf herder,” she hisses, dragging him further away from the tables so they’re deep inside the maze of holobooks, “I give you one simple task: just be friends with Muran and you kriff it up so badly. Ok, ok, just ask him out – it’s not that hard. You’ll break up in like two weeks and everything will go back to normal.”

“Hey, why would we break up ins two weeks?” he makes an insulted face.

“You and Iolo lasted about three days and before you tell me it doesn’t count it very clearly does and you two were best buddies again in under a week,” she slaps him on the back again, seemingly content with the new battle plan, “go get him, farmboy.”

“I can’t – I’m not going to tell him,” he shakes his head stubbornly and crosses his arms.

“Why the kriff not? Don’t tell me you’re getting shy all of a sudden – between you and Iolo you’ve made your way through the entire gay population of the Academy in about nine months.”

He tries to grumble, but it’s mostly true. In their defence it’s just what happens when you set two small town gays into a school full of horny teenagers, it could’ve been worse, they could’ve instantly become smitten with each other. Him and Iolo, he shudders to think how horrifying they could’ve been as a couple.

“I just can’t alright? I don’t know – this feels different somehow,” he says quietly and she softens, ruffling his hair.

“Just don’t get yourself hurt, okay?” she sighs and shakes her head, “I don’t get you guys – you Outer Rim gays really live like this.” He laughs but it feels a little hollow.

* * *

Poe looks out the viewport at Yavin 4 quickly looming into view and turns to grin at Iolo, sitting next to him in the transport.

“Are you sure this is okay?” he asks again, and Poe just elbows him in the ribs.

“We’ve just spent three days on a transport together, you really think I’m gonna send you back to Hosnian Prime now?” he laughs, “my dad’s expecting us anyways – already prepared a room for you and everything.”

Iolo just smiles a little brighter. He’d been planning to stay in the dorms for their annual break, it takes five days for a trip back to Kishi, not enough time to do anything but linger in town for a few hours before he has to get on the transport back. ‘Not worth the credits’ he’d shrugged, but Poe isn’t the kind of person to leave his roommate alone over the break.

The town hasn’t changed much in the year he’s been gone, the air is a little warmer in the run up to summer, but it’s the same muggy heat, humidity weighing heavy in his lungs. He breathes in deeply; it just now hits him how much he’s missed home.

“My dad always parks his speeder just–”

“You bought back a boyfriend already, Dameron?” that taunting voice, serpentine smile, it makes bile rise up into his throat on instinct.

“What do you want now?” he turns, tired. It’s a little jarring to go from the Academy’s golden boy back to the local town faggot in just a few measly seconds, but he doesn’t look at the expression on Iolo’s face. He isn’t sure how he’ll react.

“Think you’re better than us now you’re in some flyboy academy, huh?” Dáire sneers and they slink closer. Poe wrinkles his nose, he can’t believe he used to think they were pretty, thank the Force he raised his standards in Hosnian Prime because he wouldn’t look twice at these kinda guys these days.

“No, I don’t,” he says simply and with a smile, “how was the wintermelon harvest? I heard there was some problems with an early humidity rise.”

They stop for a second, hesitating because Poe is supposed to be cowering away, running with his pretty new boyfriend in tow, not standing here and making small talk like they’re old friends. He smiles even brighter, he’s not the scared little boy that they used to chase through the forest anymore. Iolo nudges his side and laughs, confident, golden, brave.

“It was – it was alright,” one of them finally answers, scratching the back of his head, “could’ve been worse, some of the melons rotted in the fields before we could harvest them, but not too many.”

“That’s good,” Poe smiles again, warmth almost reaching his eyes and he rolls his shoulder slowly backwards like he’s getting some stiffness out, but Dáire flinches just a touch. He’s still shorter than them (even though he swears he’s growing), but he also has a year of intense physical conditioning and close combat lessons on his side. He has to hide his smirk at how they watch him with extra wariness in his eyes.

“C’mon your dad’s probably waiting for us,” Iolo says and tugs on Poe’s hand, linking their fingers. They don’t usually do this, but Poe appreciates the solidarity and they don’t let go until they reach the edge of town and burst into laughter.

“You’re really something else, Poe,” he says, wiping his eyes after they calm themselves down, “hurry up, I wanna try your dad’s legendary pie.”

* * *

Poe and Iolo are late to the hangar on the day they’re supposed to fly for the first time. It’s stupid, but both of them were so nervous the night before that they stayed up talking quietly for hours until they drifted off at some point in the morning. More importantly both of them forgot to set their chrono alarms. You’d think by second year they could’ve remembered something like this, two of the brightest cadets in the entire Academy. Apparently not, Poe thinks as they slink into the back of the hangar and stand to attention, trying to smooth out their dark blue flight suits at the same time.

“Nice of you to join us Dameron, Arana,” Wedge Antilles’ voice booms out and Poe winces and tries his best not to want to shrivel up and disappear into the ground. Of course, it had to be Wedge here today. “As I was saying, your first task today will be choosing an astromech droid. As you all know, for X-Wing pilots, a mech droid forms an essential part of flight. Having a good rapport with your droid is highly encouraged. Keep these droids in good condition and you may be flying with them until you retire.”

Something churns inside him at that thought, some little droid bumbling along with him for the rest of his life. The entire idea has always been a little weird, he learnt to fly without an mech his entire life and even on the Academy sims they sometimes felt more like a burden than anything else.

It’s something he’ll get used to eventually, will have to anyways. You can’t fly an X-Wing without a mech droid, he thinks bitterly to himself and somewhere deep inside longs for the utter freedom of his mother’s A-Wing. Unpredictable, fickle, so sensitive it could turn with just the lightest fingertip on the controls.

He thinks about the last time he flew in that, Iolo crammed in his lap screaming his head off and Poe laughing like a maniac from behind him, Kes trying very hard to pretend he can’t see what they’re doing from the window. It reminds him of that time a girl asked him to take her up and he can’t help but grin as they walk forwards to get their assigned droid. Iolo quirks an eyebrow at him and Poe just shrugs, he’ll tell him over lunch. They can both embarrass themselves silly over it.

It takes an age to get through the entire cohort, by the time most of the cadets have their droids assigned and have filed through to the hangar to get their X-Wings, Poe’s shoulders are starting to get stiff from standing to attention for so long. He hates this, the formality of it all, aches to be able to fly without all this stiff military posturing.

“Dameron,” and Poe jerks out from his daydreams. He’s the last one there and Wedge Antilles is standing there with a droid at his feet and a patient smile on his face.

“Yessir,” he salutes on instinct and Wedge just nods him forwards. He obeys, just a touch uncertain and glances at the droid. It’s a funny looking little thing, smaller than the R0 or R6 series droid he’d been expecting and a spherical body as well. It rolls apprehensively on the spot and beeps quietly up at them, the lens on his head tilting to look up at Poe and he can’t help smiling at it just a little bit.

“This is BB-8, part of the new BB series the New Republic is rolling out, but this droid had some small issues – it’s too compassionate, too independent – the test pilots didn’t really like that. But rather than have it completely wiped or scrapped I thought someone like you would appreciate the challenge,” he smiles wryly at Poe who can’t help but grin back at him, “you might have gotten a little bored with flying with the normal mechs – always seemed that way in the sims.”

“Thank you, sir,” and he means it, there’s nothing Poe likes more than a challenge and the little BB unit trills something nervously in binary, too quiet for him to catch.

“Go join the rest of the cadets before they take off without you,” he dismisses Poe with a nod, and he marches as fast as he possibly can towards the hangar. As soon as Wedge is out of sight though he squats down and looks at the BB unit, rolling just behind him.

“Hey buddy,” he grins and pats it on the head gently. It trills back at him and he’s suddenly glad that he decided to take that elective further Binary language class in first year because the basic stuff that was compulsory feels way too inadequate, “I’m Poe Dameron, what’s your name?”

‘ _Self-identification: BB-8 unit, astromech droid. New Designation: Master-Dameron recognised.’_

“Aw, buddy you don’t have to do all that ‘master’ stuff – you can just call me Poe,” he scratches awkwardly at the back of his head, running his fingers through the too short hair.

The droid considers what he’s saying for a second, whirring slowly to itself before finally beeping, ‘ _Designation changed: Master-Poe recognised.’_

He just sighs and shrugs, standing up again with a quiet, “I guess that’ll do for now. Don’t worry we can work on it, but we’re gonna be late again, BB-8.”

‘ _Tardiness is not excusable Master-Poe,’_ the droid shrieks, propelling itself forwards and rushing ahead of Poe, ‘ _BB-8 will ensure that Master-Poe is not late in the future.’_

“Hey,” he shouts as he chases after it as it barrels through the open door to the hangar where the rest of his class is gathered.

He doesn’t notice how Wedge had been hesitating on the other side of the room, watching the entire exchange. He shakes his head quietly, it’s almost like he’s seeing ghosts the way Shara Bey’s son treats droids with that kind respect the exact same way she always did. That Poe Dameron certainly inherited a lot more than just his fancy flying from her is all he’s saying.

* * *

Poe meets Snap in the middle of his second year, meets him properly. He’s always been around the Academy between missions because his mother is an instructor, one of Poe’s favourites actually. She’s hard on them when she needs to be but knows the line between when a cadet is open to receiving criticism or already digging their heels in. Poe laps up her praise like a dying tooka.

There’s been someone sneaking in to use the simulators after hours, the entire school has already been warned that if they’re found they will be punished, but it doesn’t stop Poe. They only just let them start flying at the beginning of second year and their once a week sessions just aren’t enough. He’s been twitching to fly every single day and even though the simulator is a poor substitute for the real thing, it’s still better than nothing.

There’s something else as well, the latest test they had to do: the ‘impossible simulation’. No one has ever completed it because there isn’t an end, only an increasingly escalation of ridiculous events until there’s no hope for any pilot, let alone a fresh eyed cadet. Poe lasts for eighty-three minutes and fifty-seven seconds in his first run at the end of first year, one hundred and twenty-six minutes and eighteen seconds at his next official run at the start of second year. The average time is around forty minutes, the previous record for the entire Academy was seventy-nine minutes and eleven seconds. Poe smashes it first try, but something burns in his gut regardless.

“Kriff,” he slams his head back on the seat as his ship spirals out of control again and the screen flashes to black. He’s covered in sweat, hair sticking flat to his head as he peels off the helmet and sags against the seat to catch his breath. BB-8 beeps to remind him of the time and it’s enough for one night, he thinks, he can sneak into the fresher to rinse off his sweat and back into bed to get maybe six hours of sleep before breakfast. When he staggers out BB-8 chirps out a warning and there’s a shadowy figure lurking in the back of the room and to this day he will swear up and down that the scream was from BB-8 (it really wasn’t).

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” the shadow explains with his hands up, stepping into the light in-front of Poe, “I’m Temmin Wexley – Instructor Wexley’s son. You’re Poe Dameron, right?”

He nods his head quickly, eyes wide. He’s been caught, Temmin is going to tell Instructor Wexley and Poe is going to get kicked out of the Academy and sent back to Yavin 4 and he’s going to be a farmboy for the rest of his life he just knows it. He starts blabbering fast. “I was just practicing, sir, I didn’t want to disturb any of the instructors so I thought that I could practice after hours and BB-8 makes sure I still get six hours of sleep so I still have enough energy to do all my drills and classes tomorrow so–”

“Hey, don’t worry I’m not gonna tell,” Temmin says with a laugh, “I was just curious who keeps sneaking out to practice simulations of all things. Not steal an X-Wing, go on a few joyrides, something fun.”

“This is fun, sir,” Poe argues weakly, awkwardly shifting on the spot. The sweat is slowly cooling against his body and it sends a shiver down his spine.

“There’s always one in every year,” Temmin’s eyes crinkle when he smiles, “but you’re just practicing the same simulation over and over again – you know it’s supposed to be impossible right? You’ve already beaten the Academy record in your first year, smashed it in your second – what’re you even trying to do?”

“I just,” his fists clench by his side, “sir, my squadron always ends up dying.”

Temmin blinks slowly, brain processing what the kid just said. He’d heard of Poe Dameron, of course he had, son of Shara Bey and Kes Dameron, hotshot cadet who could outfly seasoned veterons, the boy Wedge Antilles had already taken a personal interest in and the Navy had pretty much already guaranteed a job after graduation. He’d expected to come and find some over competitive asshole who wanted to beat the system and complete the mission, but instead Poe is staring at him wide eyed and shaking, mech droid whirring around his feet and worrying about his simulated squadron.

“If I take out the leader of the enemy squadron, they take out Sabre Two. If I lead the assault on the Star Destroyer, Sabre Four, Three and Six are lost. If I lead them into the asteroid field Sabre Five doesn’t make it. No matter what I do I always end up losing people – the best I’ve done is ended up with four still remaining, but no matter what they keep on dying.” He can’t help it, just thinking about his future squadron, the people he flies with, eats with, trains with. How can he be a leader if he’s leading his squadron to their deaths?

“And then they lose you,” Temmin says softly and Poe’s head snaps up when he hadn’t even realised he’d let it drop, “no matter what your squadron loses their leader. How long do you think they last after that?”

“I don’t know the – the simulation just ends after I die,” he says, blinking and confused.

“You should think about that too, if you’re the self-sacrificing type,” he shrugs, “if you’re willing to throw yourself in-front of enemy fire to save a member of your squadron – how long can the rest of them last without you?” he sighs again and scratches his beard, “it’s a little late to think so deeply about stuff like this, but just remember Dameron – you will always end up losing people. It’s the nature of the job. No one becomes a starfighter pilot to stay safe and it’s hard to lose people, but your life is not worth less than theirs. You can do more by living than by dying for other people.”

Poe doesn’t say anything, but his mind is churning with thought. Maybe it’s a little depressing, but he’s never really considered that. Living for people, living for their memories, to fight for the people who are still alive. In the future Snap will think back to this moment and wish he spent more time drilling this idea into young Poe’s head because he’s still as much of a self-sacrificing idiot now.

“Go get washed up and go to sleep,” he shakes his head with a small smile, “and if I catch you here out of hours again, I won’t be so lenient.”

“Thank you, sir,” Poe grins at him, ruffling his drying hair so it sticks up into the air and rushes off out of the room, BB-8 hot on his heels.

“You can just call me Snap,” he calls out after Poe, “if it’s after hours I don’t really mind.”

“Okay, Snap,” he turns and smiles, starbright in the dark doorway and Snap just shakes his head. He thinks he’ll probably being seeing a lot more of Poe Dameron in the future.

* * *

By third year Poe has a set routine that follows to a T. The fresher is quiet at night, that’s his favourite time to shower even though sometimes the warm water has mostly run out and the floors are scummy with who knows what. Still, it has the added advantage of giving him an excuse to spend an extra few hours in the simulators or the hangar.

He’s grown a little too fond of the T-70 they’ve allocated him even if it’s not as fast or flashy as T-85s and he knows they’re already standard in the New Republic Navy, but he can’t help it. It’s neat and nippy in a fight the way nothing else is. He’s also not allowed to make major adjustments to the flight control or consoles, but he still tweaks away at things when he gets a chance, BB-8 sneaking him tools with the closest thing to a laugh the droid can get.

Today it’s only him and a few other guys from his year, they’re mostly done when he gets in but one of them looks him up and down appreciatively when Poe starts to pull his clothes off. He smiles but shrugs him off, he’s not really in the mood today, not after three hours of gruelling manoeuvres, two hours of conditioning and the rest of the day in the hangar and getting lectured about not getting too attached to his astromech droid by Instructor Zaaj Neeb when BB-8 tries to follow him out. He has to sadly wave goodbye to his little buddy and it beeps anxiously at him. Now he just wants a hot shower and to pass out in his bunk for the next ten hours.

The shower (thankfully) stays warm for the entire time he’s in it and he hums some song his dad used to sing to him when he was younger. It’s just two more months before he graduates then a nice one-month break for him to visit home. It’s going to weird going back without Iolo, he thinks, since he finally has enough time to get back to Keshi instead of tagging along with Poe. Nice though, to finally spend more than a few days alone with his dad.

He’s rubbing a towel through his hair, still humming when he gets back to his room still shared with Iolo because they somehow still haven’t gotten sick of each other after almost three years. It’s almost a miracle and he’ll definitely miss him if they’re allocated to different sectors in the Navy. He punches in their code, expecting Iolo to be working at his desk or maybe curled up in bed with Bastian, but instead he sees him face down, ass up in bed with Bastian pounding him from behind.

“Oh, for kriff’s sake,” he hisses, spinning around again and walking straight out the door, slamming it closed, “you couldn’t have commed me or something?”

There’s a short pause and he can hear rapid rustling and whispered shouting before Iolo sticks his head out of the door, hair ruffled all over the place and eyes wide and pleading, “Bastian’s going on that stupid weeklong trip to Utapau and we weren’t going to do anything I swear we just got carried away – I’m sorry Poe I didn’t mean–”

“It’s fine buddy, it’s whatever – have fun,” Poe waves him off even though it’s really not that okay because he has to wake up early for combat drills tomorrow and his back is going to be sore if he sleeps on the sofa in the common room, but Iolo is a good friend and he would probably do the same for Poe. So, he just smiles until Iolo’s head disappears with a soft ‘thank you’ and ‘I’d hug you now, but I’m naked and lube is dripping down my legs’. He almost smacks him with his towel just for that.

Instead he wanders slowly back down the corridor, wet towel still around his shoulders, trying to think of any alternative to the common room sofa. It’s been his acquaintance for far too many nights this year, he grimaces and stretches out the ghost of an ache he gets just thinking about it.

He frowns and ticks off all his friends in his head: Karé is definitely banging her girlfriend right now, Jess (the lucky bitch) has a single room, but only one single bed that he’s tried to share with her before and ended up with bruises on his ass, Snap is away on a mission with no communications for the next week and there leaves Muran. His mind trails off weakly at the thought, but his roommate is off world because of some family thing and Poe really needs to get a good night’s sleep tonight. 

He’s already outside Muran’s door by the time he starts to hesitate again, but Poe steels himself because it’s just a bed, not even the same bed as Muran. A different bed on the opposite side of a small room with Muran sleeping just a few metres away and oh Force this is a bad idea, but he’s already knocking and Muran opens the door with a confused look on his face.

“Hey buddy, I know it’s late but Iolo and Bastian are fucking in our room and I just really need somewhere to crash that’s not the common room sofa,” he blurts out and he must be looking really tired and sad because Muran just opens the door and pulls him in without another word.

“Couldn’t you just get one of your flings to sleep there,” he grumbles when Poe is running the towel though his short hair to get the last of the moisture out and he stops and blinks.

“I guess I didn’t think of that,” he says quietly and drapes his towel over a chair to dry, “I’m not really in the mood though – I got drills in the morning and those aren’t fun when you’re sore.”

“Do you always bottom?” he asks casually and Poe freezes, towel still on his head and Muran notices because he starts stammering out excuses, but Poe just cuts him off with a wave of his hand.

“Not always I just – uh – I prefer it, I guess? A lot of the guys I fuck prefer it as well – don’t need to think too much about that – but I mean it feels good so who really cares that much, you know?” and he doesn’t know why he’s saying this, especially not to Muran, Muran who Poe likes and has liked for the last two years. Oh, hey crush, let me talk about all the times I’ve fucked copious amounts of guys around the Academy and while we’re at it here’s a list of my favourite sex positions. Poe wants to disappear into the ground just a little bit, possibly sprint out of the room because that sofa is looking increasingly like the better option now.

“Oh I’ve just – I’ve never tried before – with a guy I mean,” and Muran is stuttering, hand rubbing awkwardly at the back of his neck, “here you can borrow these pyjamas if you want, not sure when the last time Xolani changed his sheets was – they might be a bit gross.”

Poe takes the clothes and changes quickly, trying not to feel Muran’s burning gaze on his back the entire time. They’re a little big on him, Muran is broader and taller than he is, not that it’s really very hard to be, but something flutters in Poe’s chest when he sees how the sleeves dip beyond his wrists and cover his fingers.

“I can show you sometime – if you want?” he says with a grin that doesn’t quite match what’s going on inside. He tries to sound more confident than he feels, but Muran is always the one person that Poe can’t be suave around. It’s a bad idea anyways, not just that he’s offering casual sex to a guy he’s in love with, but also being the gay experiment for a straight guy is never fun even when there aren’t really any feelings involved. Poe knows this first-hand and he still feels a bitter tang in his mouth when he sees Iarlaith holding hands with his girlfriend in mess.

“I don’t think I could do that, not with you,” Muran says quietly and Poe doesn’t let himself feel like he’s slowly being crushed, he just smiles with a small tilt of his head and turns away again, “I don’t think I could just be another guy you slept with.”

This makes Poe freeze up again, tired mind spinning with all the possibilities of what that means and kriff he’s too tired to deal with Muran’s indirectness right now. “Wait – what d’you mean? By that – by I couldn’t be ‘just another guy you slept with’.”

“Kriff I didn’t mean to say that – I just,” he sighs frustrated and rubs a hand over his face, but Poe is staring at him in his intense way again and he can’t stop talking, “I just I couldn’t just sleep with you and then watch you sleep with other guys – if I had you to myself.”

He just blinks, blinks and stares and doesn’t really say anything for a second because Muran just said that, Muran who Poe has had a crush on (and possibly been in love with) since first year and now two years later is maybe saying that he likes Poe back. He should say something, he really needs to because Muran is staring at him like he just said the worst thing in the world, but his brain really isn’t catching up here. So, he does the only thing he knows how, strides across the room and kisses him.

Muran has to bend down just a little bit, but his mouth tastes minty like toothpaste and his lips are so soft against Poe’s. They break apart, breathing softly against each other and just hold each other for a little bit.

“We’re pretty stupid, aren’t we?” Poe whispers and Muran nods fervently before diving in to kiss him again. Turns out Poe doesn’t get a good night’s sleep after all, but he walks into mess holding Muran’s hand and with a very proud neck of hickies and half the room starts cheering. It’s worth it, he thinks, even though he’s so tired during drills he’s pretty sure he nearly passes out because Muran kisses him softly afterwards before shoving him in the direction of the showers. He goes, grinning like an idiot and blows a kiss at an unsuspecting Molua as he goes in.

Karé is mostly right because they last about two months before they break up for the first time, right before graduation. It’s over something stupid, something so dumb that Poe can’t even remember what it is anymore, but they get back together just a week later.

It’s too fast, everything is too fast because they’re both just twenty-one, just in the prime of their lives. They fight all the time because Poe is too brash and too brave and tries to hunt adventure down if it doesn’t come to him, but Muran likes to follow the rules and play it safe. This is just a job to him in a way that it never can be to Poe.

Poe spends the first three months of his active service in Snap’s squadron, just doing routine checks around the Meridian sector. He’s a good pilot if not a little overeager sometimes, tumbling into dogfights with his fangs out. It’s just that he cares, cares a little too much because when he sees smugglers and pirates harassing people something just burns in his blood. They end up having the highest amount of arrests for the quarter year, Poe just beams and ducks his head when the rest of the squadron slap him on the back.

“You know, Dameron,” Snap says to him once when they’re settling down for dinner after a week-long mission, “you should try for the Lieutenant’s exam.”

Poe just blinks at him, slop dripping off his spoon and back onto the plate, “but I’ve only been serving for three months – I don’t have enough experience yet.”

“So what? It’s about time someone acted like they actually cared about something. You care, Poe – you aren’t just some career soldier who wants to get power or money. You care about your squadron, the people you’re protecting, the galaxy. You’re something different – not just your fancy flying,” he raises an eyebrow to dare Poe to disagree and under the table BB-8 trills its agreement, “see even your droid agrees. Now eat your slop and we’ll start on your application tonight,” he grins and Poe mutters ‘traitor’ to BB-8 even as he flushes all the way down his neck with happiness.

He gets promoted – of course he does. The essay he sends in is passionate and flawless, he aces the exam first go and there’s no questioning his flying ability. BB-8 tries to electrocute him with his new arm attachment when he gets the letter. Iolo and Karé nearly scream their heads off, Bastian slaps him on the back and Jess nearly takes his arm off when she gives him a celebratory punch. And Muran? He knocks on Poe’s door two days later with a box of his favourite snacks from Yavin and an apologetic smile. He lets him in, and they tumble onto the bed together.

You don’t need to speak when you fall in love young, it’s a mistake he realises in retrospect, but when he has the heat of Muran’s mouth on his skin, words don’t really come too easily. Poe doesn’t regret it, even though he regrets a lot of things from when he was young. Love isn’t always logical after all, and even all these years later he knows that he loved Muran. Always, always, burning away in his chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the simulator scene w poe and snap is heavily inspired by [Then Shall Our Names](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11112177/chapters/24799041) by SugarSpiceandCurseWords. check their stuff out its super amazing!


	2. grow the tree

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe carries on fighting for the Republic. He still believes, at least that's what he's convinced himself but really there's only one reason for him to stay, something that he's not brave enough to let go of just yet. He stays, he fights and eventually he can't anymore.
> 
> or
> 
> This is how Poe Dameron joins the Resistance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ohoho look at me sticking to my schedule for once in my life my professors would be shocked lmaoo. anyways this is the big break from the republic and poe is doing a lot of thinking! there is a canonical death in here (bonus points if u can guess who it is lol) and mentions of alcohol so oop. also bad coping mechanisms but that is pretty much just this entire fic so......

Poe’s just twenty-five, already a captain and it feels like the weight of the galaxy is always weighing on his shoulders and boy is it heavy. To just sit around and do nothing when the First Order is out there already reaching its long fingers into the edges of the New Republic is exactly the opposite of everything instinct Poe has ever had. Inaction tastes bitter and leaden on his tongue. So, he does what he knows best, something pretty stupid.

“You’re too headstrong and you’re reckless, Dameron,” the Admiral snarls and Poe stands there, hands behind his back clenched into fists to stop himself from doing something else even more stupid, “you put the entire Republic in danger when you try butt heads with the First Order like that – we will not have another galactic war started because some flyboy couldn’t keep his itchy fingers off the trigger.”

“With all due respect sir,” he starts and he doesn’t even try to hide the anger burning in his voice, “they were aiding the escape of a known crime lord, which we had the opportunity to stop and–”

“Shut up Dameron and get out of my sight – you’re grounded indefinitely. Consider yourself lucky I’m not demoting you on the spot.” he snarls, turning and leaving before Poe can get out another word. He leaves him standing in the big empty briefing room, clenching his jaw.

BB-8 chirps quietly, no words just a small sound of reassurance, but he’s so wound up it doesn’t even help. He just shakes his head and takes a big harsh breath, the droid whirring around his feet nervously.

“Go charge in the hangar, buddy,” he stops and bends down to speak quietly to BB-8, a brief moment in warmth in a sea of anger, “it’s been a long couple of days, you deserve some rest.”

BB-8 beeps its confirmation sounding only a little bit worried about Poe, but he’s used to it, everyone seems to think he doesn’t know what he’s doing these days. He strides away down the corridor and barely notices when people scatter out of his way. It’s a military base and everyone has good instincts, they know when someone is still fresh off the warpath and obligingly give him a wide orbit.

He slams the door of his room and sits down on his bed, letting out a frustrated scream and gripping his hair so tightly he’s scared it might rip out. It aches pleasantly when he loosens his grip, reminding him that in the burn of his anger he’s still there, still human, still Poe.

There’s a knock on the door before it slides open, Muran slipping in and sitting quietly next to him. He pulls him in for a soft kiss, threading their fingers together and Poe’s breathing slows, his shoulders slump with tiredness. It’s like being with Muran drains all of the anger out of him, almost.

“Get out of your flightsuit, go take a shower,” Muran says softly, pushing Poe up to his feet, “no point moping like this.”

“They grounded me,” Poe says dully, standing in the middle of the room and staring at his hands, “for engaging with the First Order. Admiral threatened to demote me.”

Muran’s jaw flexes, but his voice stays even and calm, “I was in the command centre – you were reckless today Poe – you were outnumbered and had no backup coming. What if something had happened? And you know we have orders not to engage with the First Order – it could be an act of war.”

Anger flashes deep and hot in his gut again, different and more like frustration than anything else because it’s _Muran_ and he’s a smart guy and how can he not see what a big threat the First Order already is. This clash rises up between them again like it always does, burning a deep chasm between them, sometimes Poe isn’t sure love is enough to bridge it.

“We need to start taking the First Order more seriously before they become too big of a threat for us to handle,” he says stubbornly, too tired to stay angry, but still angry enough to not just let this go, “they’re a growing fascist empire, they want to destroy the New Republic and everything it stands for.”

“Poe – baby, your head’s stuck in the past,” Muran holds out his hands, placating. Poe almost wants to hiss at that, he’s not just some jumpy tooka that needs soothing, “you spend too much time with Pava and Snap and you’re gonna start seeing old ghosts everywhere. The First Order isn’t the Empire, that’s done now.”

“But what if it’s not – you’ve heard the reports,” resenting the dig at his friends just a little bit because Jess and Snap are one of the many people on base that agree with him and one of the few that dare to say it out loud, “they’re ripping independent worlds to shreds in the Outer Rim – are we supposed to just sit here and wait for them to attack us first?”

“You sound like Senator Organa,” Muran shakes his head with a snort, “what’re you gonna do run off and start another rebellion?”

“She contacted me,” Poe says quietly after a little while, hands loosening, “wanted to organise a meeting to talk about something she’s been planning.”

“Poe, what’re you talking about? Why didn’t you tell me?” Muran asks, voice low and confused. Poe doesn’t look him at him, but doesn’t have to, he can hear the hurt in his voice.

“I just – I thought I’d hear her out you know – she knew my parents back in the Rebel Alliance,” he glances at him, blaster-quick and is struck by the overwhelming disappointment on his face. He looks away again, “I think she was sizing me up to maybe recruit me – nothing definitive yet, but there’s rumours about her forming an alternative group to oppose the First Order.”

“Don’t be stupid, Poe. What’re you going to do, go get yourself killed so you can pretend to be your mum again?” he snaps and his eyes widen when he realises what he’s said, “wait Poe I didn’t mean–”

It hurts. Hurts worse than when he’s been shot or crashed his X-Wing because this time it hits so deep under his guard that he can feel the ache against the inside of his ribs. He just looks at Muran, eyes horrified and empty and feels every bit of anger that he’d thought had already settled down burst back up.

“Glad to know that’s just how little you think of me,” he spits, ignoring how Muran opens his mouth again to try explain himself, apologise. Poe doesn’t know, doesn’t care, “that I’m just some mama’s boy whose mama isn’t around anymore. I was just glad that apparently, I’m not the only one in the galaxy who can see how big of a threat the First Order can be, but clearly I have to wait until they kill one of my kriffing pilots until I can do anything about it. And I said no, just so you know,” his eyes flashing dangerously, daring Muran to speak, “for _you._ Because I cared about what _you_ thought, because I wanted to consider _you_ in my future.”

“Poe,” Muran finally manages to say, but it’s too late. He storms out and the door slams shut again, leaving Muran to sink onto the bed by himself wondering why the kriff he always speaks before he thinks.

Poe just pounds on Iolo’s door and he lets him in without asking too many questions, letting him curl up on his bed still in his dirty flightsuit and tear tracks all down his face. He just strokes his hair gently, talking quietly about some holodrama he’d watched last week until Poe’s shoulders finally loosen. His voice is quiet when he tells him what happened, and Iolo has to control his hands to stop them from gripping Poe’s hair tight in his anger.

Iolo wants to say ‘he’s an asshole and a complete nerf herder, you have the best instincts of any pilot in the galaxy and anyone can see the way the First Order is growing. Say the word and we’ll all go with you, I promise you.’ But Poe is in love, even now, even when everything hurts and Iolo thinks he’ll never understand just how deep Poe Dameron’s heart can go, just how much love it can hold.

So instead he just holds him and watches him slowly fall asleep, chest aching and wondering if he’s the only one in the whole New Republic who realises just what how amazing Poe Dameron really is. Him and Leia Organa apparently, he huffs a laugh as he turns off the lights, what a weird little club that is.

* * *

It takes a long while before Poe really trusts Muran again. The entire time he’s grounded (two months, one week and three days) he avoids him, always going to the mess hall when he’s on duty, hiding in the hangar to fiddle endlessly with his X-Wing. The problem is that he doesn’t really have anything to do, he isn’t allowed to go off-world, but he doesn’t have any boring tedious paperwork to do either. After seven long years of a nonstop military regime it’s a little jarring to just have a whole indefinite load of _nothing_ to do.

He ends up wandering into the Academy and after one long tired look at him, Wedge Antilles asks him if he wants to help out with the new recruits. He jumps at the chance, grinning.

They love him, staring at him wide eyed with murmurs of ‘that’s Poe Dameron, he’s the best pilot in the entire galaxy’ rippling through the crowd and he basks in the warmth of people who still think he can do his job right. To the instructors he’s still the golden boy and he manages to wheedle his way into the classes as an assistant, helping out on the sims, a body to be thrown around in physical demonstrations, anything really.

“So, are you going to tell my why you’re really here, Dameron? Or are we just supposed to expect the New Republic’s best pilot decided his new calling was teaching?” Wedge finally asks him around a month in when they’re eating lunch, curious smile on his face. Poe freezes under his gaze. He feels like a scolded cadet again, some things never change even though he technically ranks higher than Wedge right now.

“I was grounded for flying too _recklessly_ ,” he pulls a face as he says the word and Wedge laughs into his soup, “there was this crime lord we’d been tracking for months and we finally got him in a position where we could take him down but the First Order swooped in. We had orders not to engage with them, but I couldn’t just let him get away. We were on the edge of Republic territory – this was our jurisdiction. I went after them and we could’ve taken them easily, but we were called back and I was – I was punished for disobeying orders and leading my squadron into unauthorised conflict. The Admiral said he wouldn’t spark another galactic war because of some ‘trigger happy flyboy’.”

“Ah,” is all Wedge says for a while and Poe fidgets uncomfortably, picking at the edge of his food and waiting for his judgement. “Well, all I can say is that when I was your age, I probably would have done the same thing. You always try to do the right thing, Poe, but sometimes it’s more complicated than that.”

Poe opens his mouth to argue, but then shuts it again with a quick glance from Wedge. He stuffs a spoonful of stew in his mouth to stop himself from saying something stupid and he hears Wedge’s quiet huff of laughter.

“But what I will also say is that the entire New Republic is run by scared old bastards who still see the old war everywhere they look and will do anything to stop a new one, even turn a blind eye to the threats that have begun to loom over it,” he smiles a little sadly at Poe, like he never dreamed he would have to do this again. Within a single lifetime the Republic that they had all sacrificed their lives for was already crumbling from the inside. “It would do them some good to listen to young people once in a while, but ironically the command structure is not made for flexibility and democracy.”

Poe thinks as he chews, the stew is thick and meaty just like it always was when he was in the Academy and the kitchens in the base just aren’t the same as the ones here. He misses it once in a while, when he’s alone in his private officer’s room and wishing that he could listen to Iolo’s little snores to fall asleep.

“Change is coming,” Wedge says when they finish eating and are putting their trays away, “Force knows that the New Republic won’t be ready for it but make sure you are.”

He nods, wondering what the change exactly Wedge is talking about, but there’s no chance to ask because classes are starting and the cadets are filing back in from their lunch breaks, chattering and eager. He puts his biggest smile on and forgets about the entire mess for a little bit.

* * *

Nothing ever really goes back to normal, not between him and Muran or in work. They put him back on active service, of course they do, because as much posturing as the Admiral likes to do, he’s their best pilot and there are things he can do that would take an entire squadron otherwise. He gets put on boring routine patrols for the first month afterwards, but it’s ok because anything is better than not being able to fly for months on end.

So, Poe flies, he flies and he always comes home. He always limps back into the common room with the biggest grin and Jess comes to slap him hard on the back and tell him he’s done a good job. It’s easy in that way, no Muran, no hard missions, just the constant pressure of the First Order slowly pressing down on them. It’s not hard to see the trail of devastation they leave with smouldering villages and empty towns.

Poe can’t do anything, but he makes sure to get BB-8 to note everything down and passes it on to Snap who has his own contacts and he promises that they’re doing the best they can. He doesn’t know exactly what’s going on, but it’s not too hard to figure it out. Pilots spending an extra day on easy missions, disappearing into the vast blackness of space for just a few hours and coming back with more damage than they should have. He does the best he can to make sure none of this ever gets to anyone higher than him in the chain of command and it feels just a little like victory.

He dates someone, it’s a weird sort of thing because it lasts for almost ten months but neither of them have their heart in it. He cries when they break up more because he feels like it’s expected of him than anything else and Jess drags him out drinking. Seven drinks in she shouts across the cantina that if she ever sees the bastard who dares hurt Poe Dameron again then she’ll shoot him in the face and he laughs so hard he falls over. They both get kicked out afterwards, but he feels lighter anyways.

“I heard you broke up with Teu,” Muran says to him a couple weeks later when all the pilots under Poe’s command have gathered together for their biweekly team bonding. It’s a poor excuse to get drunk and Poe is if nothing else an indulgent commanding officer, it doesn’t help that most of his friends are in that group and Jess, Snap and Bastian always tag along anyways.

It’s just harmless fun until Muran is a little too drunk and leaning against Poe with his breath slowly fanning across his skin. He can’t help but close his eyes and imagine it’s a year ago and they’re still together and somewhere far, far different to the pilot’s common room with the lights turned on dim and cantina music blaring.

“Yeah, it’s alright it was a mutual thing,” he says taking a long sip of his beer and ignoring how Muran still smells light and fruity underneath the sweat and alcohol, “to be honest I’m not too beat up about it.”

“Oh,” Muran says quietly and then, “I’m sorry Poe.”

“I know – you’ve told me about a million times now,” he can’t help but smile, but it doesn’t stop the distrust from creeping up his veins again, what Muran really thinks of him, that he’s just some flyboy trying to catch up to his dead mum.

“I mean it every time,” he says solemnly, “I should’ve never said something like that ‘cause I didn’t mean it. You’re an amazing person, Poe, your own person – I was a complete nerf herder to let you go, worst mistake of my life.”

Poe doesn’t know what possesses him in that moment, but he turns his head and kisses him soft and sweet on the mouth. He tastes like whisky, deep and rich and when he opens his eyes, he sees Muran staring back at him.

“I’ve been dreaming about you doing that for months now,” Muran whispers before pulling their mouths together again. It’ll work, Poe thinks, bright and desperate, it has to because he’s never loved anyone like this before, he doesn’t think he’ll love anyone like this again. No matter what, they can make it work.

But love doesn’t quite work like that. And maybe his friends really are that much smarter than him because Karé makes a face when they announce that they getting back together again and Iolo pulls Poe aside to make double sure that this is really what he wants. Even Jess jabs him just a little more gently and she tells him quietly that she really will make good on that promise in the cantina if Muran hurts him again. He wonders when he became the fragile one his friends fussed over.

They still fight, especially when the First Order have come down hard and they just can’t do _anything,_ it leaves Poe an angry mess and Muran just falls quiet. Still, they always manage to talk it out before the sun rises again the next day and they never go into missions leaving something unsaid. ‘Communication is important’ Muran always says and it’s true, they’re not twenty-one anymore, fresh out of the Academy and too hot-headed to say sorry.

When he stands in front of the mirror and ruffles his hair (it’s been short for so many years, he thinks sadly) and realises that he’s already twenty-seven, almost thirty. When he laughs at how old he feels already there are the beginnings of smile lines around his eyes. There’s just a hint of pride, when he sees how they’re just like his father’s.

So, they have a good year, but the year after is murkier. If the First Order was aggressive before, now they come down with the force of a star destroyer. There’s no subtlety anymore, they attack friendly worlds with New Republic squadrons in orbit and Poe can’t do a thing about it.

It’s in the middle of this that he gets promoted to commander. It’s not that much of a change, he still leads Rapier Squadron, he still gets punished every time he gets even just a touch too aggressive with the First Order, but now he writes arrest warrants for defecting pilots that he never chases down. It burns a little in his chest when he has to make Snap’s.

“You could join us, Poe,” Snap says a few nights before he leaves even though he knows what Poe will say, “you know how big of a threat the First Order are – the New Republic won’t do anything until it’s too late.”

“I know,” he says, his heart aching to say yes. He knows Iolo, Karé and Pava will come with him, Bastian with a little bit of convincing, but Muran won’t, “I can’t right now. I’m sorry Snap.”

“The Resistance will always have a place for you if you ever change your mind,” he says and pulls Poe into a hug. It feels a little bit too much like a goodbye and both their eyes are watering when they pull away.

“Fly steady, Snap. I’ll keep an eye out for you guys,” he says with a shaky smile and he doesn’t see him again for more than a year.

* * *

Something has to give, he feels it in his gut, he can’t stay here, he can’t just carry on listening to the Admiral blather on about how the Senate has again ignored Poe’s demands for further action. They’re in deadlock, he drawls, and Poe bites back a remark that they’ve been like that ever since he left the Academy.

There’s only so much he can do when he’s passing information on to the Resistance, but not able to fly any of their missions himself. Snap tells him as much as he can, always through unmonitored private channels on a burner holopad Poe keeps hidden under the mattress. He aches to get out there himself, to make a real difference instead of just being little more than a glorified intelligence droid. He knows what needs to happen, he knows, he knows, he knows that there’s only one thing keeping him in the New Republic.

“I don’t know if I have the strength to do this,” he whispers to BB-8 in the hangar after they finish some routine repairs, “I don’t know if I’m brave enough to.”

‘ _Friend-Poe is only of moderate physical strength_ ,’ it beeps and then after a small moment of consideration, ‘ _but Friend-Poe is very brave. Unable to process exact calculations of ‘bravery’, but Friend-Poe does not often back down despite calculations often suggesting it would be a more positive outcome to do so. BB-8 has full confidence that Friend-Poe will be able to complete his mission.’_

He cracks a small smile, “thanks for the pep talk, buddy. I think you should go hang out with some your droid buddies for a while – I know I’m sorry I just need to uh – complete my mission, I guess.”

The droid beeps something annoyed back at Poe that he definitely didn’t teach it. He really needs to have a few words with Pava to stop her from teaching BB-8 more swearwords because it’s going to slip up in-front of the wrong person one day and get Poe punched.

He finds Muran in their shared room, sitting by the desk and reading something on a holopad with his brows furrowed.

“Hey, buddy,” he says quietly when he enters and Muran smiles back at him, reaching an arm out to pull him in for a kiss, “can we talk about something real quick?”

“Yeah? What’s up, Poe?” he smiles against Poe’s hand, brushing his lips over the delicate skin on his wrist and everything feels so wrong. Poe’s in love, he’s still so in love, but sometimes the galaxy needs to come first. He knows it, he knows what he has to do, all he needs is to open his mouth and say, ‘I think we should break up’, but they get stuck in his throat like glass.

“Muran, I–” before he can finally force himself to speak the alarms on the base blare to life, “–shit, we’ve got to go.”

“What were you going to say?” Muran asks when they’re tumbling into their flightsuits and out of the room, red lights flashing around them.

“It’s alright, it’s nothing urgent. I’ll just tell you after the mission,” Poe says with the biggest smile he can muster, because he might not be the brightest star in the galaxy, but he knows that breaking up with someone right before a mission isn’t the right thing to do. Muran deserves better than that.

Muran just frowns at him, Poe knows he doesn’t like leaving things unsaid before missions, but there isn’t any time between a quick briefing and pre-flight checks and Iolo and Karé are already there. They’ll be back to base in a couple of hours, maybe a day at a stretch because it’s just a response to a distress call. A squadron of X-Wings showing up is usually more than enough to scare off pirates or tow back a malfunctioning shuttle. It’s okay, Poe tells himself as they climb into their X-Wings, I’ll just tell him when we get back.

“This is Rapier One, are we ready for take-off?” he says into his comm and he hears all three of them chime in. They take off in formation behind him and he has no idea how wrong he’s going to be about everything.

He doesn’t see Muran die. He hears it instead. Not in the silence of space, but through the brief roar and then rapid silence in his comms. It should’ve just been a routine mission, just another distress signal from a shuttle in deep space. There’s no time to breathe, no time to mourn, there’s five TIE Fighters on his tail and Poe doesn’t have time to cry.

“Poe,” Iolo’s voice comes, after everything has calmed down, after the TIE Fighters have been downed and Yissira Zyde is gone before they can do anything else about it, “Poe don’t do anything stupid.”

He ignores him, clicking into communication with the command centre with his head still buzzing with static, “Command, this is Rapier One, permission to perform recon on Yissira Zyde.”

“ _Permission denied, Rapier One. Return to base, over.”_

“What do you mean ‘permission denied’, the First Order just killed Muran and I’m supposed to just return to base like it never happened?” he can hear the anger rising in his voice, but he can’t help it, he can’t look at the empty place in their formation where he should’ve been.

“ _Commander Dameron return to base that is an order. Do not engage further the with the First Order,”_ the Admiral says and the buzzing in Poe’s ears is so loud it drowns everything else out entirely. He shuts off his comm.

“BB-8 disable communications and location tracking with the command centre,” he says, a new sense of calm flickering through him. There will be time to grieve when this is all over, once he finishes this mission and tracks down Yissira Zyde and rips her away from the First Order’s even if he has to get out of his X-Wing and do it with his own two hands. “I’m going after Yissira Zyde. BB-8 can we get calculations on its hyperspace trajectory?”

‘ _Communications and tracking disabled. Trajectory calculating – will be complete in approximately two minutes.’_ BB-8 beeps at him, ‘ _Friend-Poe is disobeying orders?’_

“Yeah, _Friend-Poe_ ,” Karé’s voice comes over the comms, “wanna tell me why command is shouting down my comm asking why Rapier One has dropped location and cut off comms?”

“I’m going after Yissira Zyde,” he says grimly and starts firing up the engines when BB-8 beeps in confirmation that its finished calculating the hyperspeed trajectory, “I can’t just go back to Hosnian Prime and pretend everything is just peachy anymore. I’m not gonna let Muran’s–” his voice breaks slightly at his name, “I’m not gonna let his sacrifice be for nothing. You know what’s going to happen if we go back now. They won’t engage, they won’t investigate, it’ll be like nothing happened at all.”

“Ok then we’re coming with you,” Karé says, casually as anything, “R0-7Q3 disable communications and location tracking with command centre.”

“Wait what?” he turns in the cockpit to look at Karé and sees her tilt her shake her head at him in disbelief.

“I’m coming too, you nerfherder,” Iolo finally speaks, voice quiet but not defeated, “Muran was our friend too you know.”

“Ok,” he takes a deep shuddering breath, “ok we’re doing this. BB-8 send Rapier Two and Three the coordinates of the jump. Let’s go.”

* * *

They make it back to base, Poe barely does, escaping by the skin of his teeth with a L’ulo Stand that shouldn’t have worked. The jubilation barely lasts because his stomach drops when he only hears two starfighters land behind him. There’s no time to mourn, he tells himself, no time at all. The Admiral is waiting for them inside the hangar, slowly going purple in his anger.

“I didn’t know humans could even turn that colour,” he jokes to BB-8 as he clambers out and it trills with laughter.

“Commander Dameron you ignored a direct order and engaged in a military conflict with the First Order. This is breaches Republic Command. You will face court martial for your actions,” he spits, spraying Poe’s face with saliva, but he doesn’t wince or look away. There’s nothing to be ashamed of anymore.

“And what were you going to do if I just came back?” he grins, slow and easy, “nothing? You would’ve done nothing, just like you’ve been doing for the last Force knows how many years. This entire thing is a whole load of bantha shit. No one’s going to do anything until it’s too kriffing late.”

“Dameron how dare you,” he splutters as Poe just shakes his head and walks away, “I’ll have your head for insubordination.”

“I’ll see you at the trial,” he shouts over his shoulder with a mocking salute and BB-8 trills a loud string of insults that only Pava could’ve taught him.

“Poe you’re an idiot,” Karé shouts with a laugh when her and Iolo finally catch up with him in the corridor

“I hope you have a plan because I sure as hell don’t want to get thrown in a New Republic cell,” Iolo chips in, nudging his shoulder.

“I got BB-8 to contact Snap before we landed, there’s a shuttle going to Mirrin Prime that we can hop on in thirty minutes and he’ll meet us there,” he stops and smiles softly at his friends, “are you guys sure about this?”

“Poe Dameron, I swear to every star in the galaxy you’re a kriffing idiot,” Iolo snaps, crossing his arms and glaring, “we’re going with you and nothing that comes out of your stupid nerfherder mouth is going to change our mind.”

Poe just grins even wider, “ok then – grab your stuff and meet at the spaceport in fifteen minutes. Let’s go join the Resistance.”

He doesn’t spend long in his shared room with Muran, tries not to look around at the desk where the holopad he’d been looking still was, or how his uniform is still scattered on the floor. He just changes out of his flightsuit as quickly as he can and into some civilian clothes, shrugs on his mother’s jacket and stuffs some clothes into a bag. He sweeps in the holos and ship schematics he has on the desk in as well, remembers to grab the holopad from under the mattress and his hair oils from the fresher. He manages to splash some water on his face before BB-8 bleeps to remind him they have to go and he stops at the doorway for another second, hesitating.

“Just a second, BB,” he murmurs and drops his bag at the doorway. He kneels down and carefully folds Muran’s uniform, just like he would always make sure to do when he had the time and puts it down on the bed. It’s almost like he’s going to come back. It’s almost like he never left.

“Bye, Muran,” he says quietly and BB-8 beeps its goodbyes as well. He picks up his bag and they walk out together. He doesn’t look back even though he wants to. He remembers the words Snap had said to him all those years ago, when he was still just some bright-eyed cadet, ‘you can do more by living than by dying for other people’. He’ll live for Muran, he’ll make sure those First Order bastards pay for every single thing that they’ve done.

* * *

The three of them fall asleep as soon as they sit down in the shuttle, it’s not surprising as they’ve been awake for around thirty hours after all. Poe wakes up a few hours later when the shuttle is making a bumpy landing with a crick in his neck and Karé’s drool all over his shoulder. He groans slightly and rubs the sleep out of his eyes.

There’s a small kid on the other side of the shuttle that points at them and whispers something to their parents. They must look like a real sorry bunch with their helmet messy hair and tired eyes. He tries to run his hands through his hair to tame it but judging by the kid’s smothered laughter it doesn’t get any better.

“Who the kriff was driving that box of bolts?” Iolo grumbles as they disembark, wiping at the line of drool down his chin and Poe realises he has matching damp spots on both shoulders, “I could do a better job in my sleep.”

“And that’s why you never let an X-Wing pilot fly in your transport,” comes a familiar voice in the crowd of the port, “come on you bunch of flyboys.”

They shriek and the three of them pile onto Snap before he can say anything else, a mess of bony limbs and bags hitting each other in the face. Poe’s laughing and burying his face into someone’s shoulder and just breathing. He’s alive, they’re all alive, these people who are so, so important to Poe. He loves them, in a different way than he loved Muran, but it’s love, nonetheless.

“So just you three, huh?” Snap asks as he leads them into the crowd, “four – sorry BB-8.”

“Kriff, Pava is gonna be so pissed that we left her behind,” Karé grins and Iolo groans into his hands.

“And Bastian is gonna kill me for not telling him,” and he rolls his eyes when Snap and Karé jostle him and wolf whistle.

“No Muran, though? Couldn’t get him to change his mind in the end, eh,” Snap asks as they turn a corner, down a quieter road and Poe’s blood slowly starts freezing in his veins. Iolo turns and looks at him, eyes wide and unsure.

“Muran – uh – he didn’t – he didn’t make it. The First Order they–” he closes his eyes and takes a deep gulping breath, “they killed him. In the last mission, defending Yissira Zyde.”

“Oh kriff,” Snap stops dead, pity in his eyes that Poe desperately doesn’t want to see because it makes his chest seize up and if he starts crying now, he’s not sure he’s ever going to stop, “Poe I’m so sorry.”

“It’s – it’s okay,” he tries his best to smile, “I just gotta keep going. There’ll be time to mourn later, but for now there’s work to be done right?”

His voice goes shaky at the end, but Snap gets what he’s trying to say and turns, leading them deeper into the city and Poe takes another shuddering breath. There’s time to mourn, when they finally figure out what the kriff is going on.

Snap motions them into a dark little cantina, just an elderly humanoid with mottled blue skin standing behind the bar and wiping some glasses. He nods at them quietly as they pass, trooping up the stairs and Snap unlocks a door. There’re beds in it, only two, but it’s not like Iolo and him haven’t shared before and they’re plenty bigger than the ones they’re used to at base. He almost wants to pass out immediately, but then he sees a woman sitting by the window.

“Princess Organa,” he says, his mouth dropping open and he salutes on instinct, Iolo and Karé following suit, “I am Commander Poe Dameron, these are my Lieutenants, Iolo Arana and Karé Kun.”

“It’s General Organa now,” she says with a small wry smile, “and I certainly remember you. It’s only been a little under a year since our last meeting after all.” He sees Snap give him a small curious glance, but he just ignores him, he can tell that story later. “You turned me down last time, but now you’re certain you want to join the Resistance, Commander Dameron?”

“Yes – definitely so, General,” he says, not thinking about what kept him in the Republic last time and what’s missing now, “I think we’ve all witnessed first-hand that the New Republic isn’t willing to do anything against the First Order, even when they,” he grits his teeth, “when they kill Republic pilots.”

“I’m glad to have you onboard, Commander Dameron. All three of you. I know you’ve just come back from a long mission so you’ll spend the night here on Mirrin Prime and we’ll transfer you to our star cruiser tomorrow,” she stands and honestly Poe thinks she’s one of the most terrifying people he’s ever met. There’s a quiet aura of power around her that he can’t quite explain, for someone who barely reaches his shoulder it feels like the shadow she casts is ten metres long. “And even when we are on the star cruiser the three of you may have as long as you need to grieve.”

“How did you–” he splutters out before he can collect himself.

“You weren’t our only spy in the New Republic, Dameron,” she says with a small laugh and Poe just shakes his head in amazement as the door closes behind her.

“Well she’s kriffing terrifying,” Iolo hisses, sinking down onto the bed with a groan, “none of the Admirals were halfway as scary as her.”

Snap huffs out a laugh and shakes his head, “Force and this is her being _nice_. Don’t ever get on her bad side is all I’m saying.”

“No, kriff – if I was the First Order I’d be shaking in my pants,” Karé laughs, sitting on the other bed and resting her head in her hands. She sounds tired, is tired, they’ve been awake for Force knows too long and Snap leaves the three of them to get settled in, saying he has the room next door.

They force Poe to have the first shower, practically shoving him into the fresher when he dares to open his mouth and protests and he’s a little glad. The warm water washes away three days’ worth of grime and sweat. He stands there just for a few minutes afterwards, staring into the fogged-up mirror and tugging gently at his mother’s ring.

The chain is warm and reassuring against his skin, something that won’t ever change no matter what. He lets it fall against his chest and breathes in, out, in, out. He’s still alive even though Muran isn’t, he’s still alive so he has the chance to fight for all the people who can’t anymore. Muran, his mother, the countless people who the First Order has killed, the countless people they will kill in the future. He can do more by living for people than dying for them and Poe will do everything he can while he’s still breathing. He presses his lips to the ring softly, that’s his only promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hehe hopeful ending to this chapter! hope u enjoyed! leave a comment and a kudo if u want it would mean a lot to me!


	3. wait for dawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe settles into the Resistance and finds himself more at home than he's felt anywhere else in the galaxy. He begins to realise that the galaxy is worth fighting for, even the ugly and broken parts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> helloo small miracle that I'm still sticking to my schedule so lol! this is probably poe at his happiest in the entire fic so enjoy it while it lasts bc its all downhill from here! also there is a very brief mention of sexual assault which doesn't go into any detail (it's just an insinuation) but if that makes u uncomfortable it's just the two sentences from 'One Twi'lek shows Poe' to the end of the paragraph!

The Resistance is where Poe belongs. This is what he knows sure as the stars even just a few weeks into the job. It’s hard, much harder than anything he had to do in the Republic. There’s nothing here, they’re operating out of a star cruiser with less than fifty people onboard and half of Poe’s missions are just simple resource gathering missions, just flying transports with crates of food stacked in the back. It should be boring, but instead he thrives.

They give him a T-70 X-Wing and Snap slaps him on the back and says, ‘go wild’ and his eyes nearly pop out of his head. He flies it once or twice, getting used to the way everything moves under his fingertips, taking note of what he likes what he doesn’t like so much and then he gets to work. He completely dismantles the console, rewiring everything and strips about ten things out of the engine. Every time he has a moment outside of missions and strategy and basic human functions, he’s in the hangar, BB-8 buzzing around by his side and elbow deep in his ship.

Pava laughs at him when she arrives a month later, after she’s done shouting at him and punching him (hard) for leaving without her, but she’s exactly the same with her new X-Wing. All of the pilots are. It’s something novel and fresh to be able to finally tinker with their own ships, none of the rules and regulations in the Republic to stop them anymore.

Now Poe doesn’t kid himself, he loves the design of T-70s more than most people, but he knows that they only have them because they don’t have access to T-85s. He misses the extra speed sometimes, the way T-85s moved obedient and silent under his command. T-70s on the other hand are thrumming and alive, the engine always roaring around him, the entire ship purring around him makes him feel alive in a whole different way. They duck and roll so much easier than T-85s, smaller and neater, like a dagger instead of a sword they feel more natural in Poe’s palm.

They’re easier to get as well, now that they aren’t standard in the Republic Navy. There’s so many just lying around, a few years old and willing to fall into Resistance hands for only a couple hundred thousand credits, maybe less if the seller is sympathetic to the cause. Poe’s even gotten a couple extra discounts with just a little bit of flirty dancing in the cantina, one of his smouldering gazes coupled with running his hands through his tousled hair and maybe a couple drinks thrown in.

“You amaze me,” Karé says with a small shake of his head when Poe comes back two days late with ten almost new X-Wings and a spare five-hundred-thousand credits in his pocket. He just grins back, throwing her a cheeky wink and blowing her a kiss as she pretends to swoon against her X-Wing, Pava making gagging noises in the background.

In the months after Rapier Squadron defects (and us! Jess always chimes in to remind them with Bastian nodding his head behind her) they get an influx of defectors from the New Republic. Leia makes sure to only partially attribute to Poe to stop his head from getting so big it doesn’t fit in an X-Wing cockpit anymore. The star cruiser that once felt so empty begins to feel crammed full, you can’t take five steps without bumping into someone else in the corridor and it’s hard to find an empty table in the mess hall anymore. Even the self-designated pilots’ common room starts getting filled with techs and mechanics no matter how much Jess lurks by the door, hunched like a territorial tooka. Poe has to move in with her and they squabble constantly like particularly close siblings. He almost misses the peace he had with Iolo before.

He’s starting to think that even the recycled air is starting to taste stale and he’s practically forgotten what plants even look like. He itches to go back to Yavin 4, even for a day and just stand in the jungle, maybe spend a few hours lying under the tree in his garden listening to the chime of its leaves in the wind.

He can’t though and he tells his dad this every time he gets a chance to call home, he can’t just leave because there’s no time and if he’s gone then who else is going to do his job? They’re just one star cruiser trying to fight a whole empire, there’s no time for a quick trip back home. He tries to ignore the long worried looks Kes gives him, looking ever more tired and old in the flickering blue hologram.

“I’ll come home dad, don’t worry,” he says before he ends the call, trying to smile the biggest he can, “but I just can’t walk away from this fight.”

“I know Poe,” he sighs sadly, shaking his head, “I’m starting to wish you grew up more like your grandfather and less like your mother and me – you always have to do what’s right.”

It leaves him a little heavy and a little happy as he goes to sit in the next command meeting, Snap sending him a curious look when he enters the room, almost buzzing.

“I just called my dad,” he says quietly as he settles down next to him, pulling his jacket a little tighter around him, “he’s worried, but he knows I’m doing the right thing.”

“You are,” Snap nods, squeezing his shoulder in reassurance, “and he’s always going to worry – all you gotta do is not give him any reason to be worried, eh Dameron?”

He laughs at that, sitting up a little straighter as everyone quietens down for Leia to start talking, muttering under his breath, “gonna need to do more than that to make me fly safe, Snap.” He grins even wider at his rolled eyes.

The meeting is about building an on-planet base, somewhere so they don’t have to be constantly burning fuel in a star cruiser and can properly fit everyone in the growing Resistance. Jess and Bastian have been scouting out potential locations for the past two weeks whilst Poe has been monitoring some potential First Order bases near them. He’s only gotten into two dogfights and he’s pretty kriffing proud of himself for that.

There’s ten in total, all in the Outer Rim and each with their own pros and cons. At one-point Jess starts talking about Hoth and Poe can’t stop himself but groan out loud and there’s a few snickers in return.

“If we set up a base on Hoth I’ll defect to the First Order,” he grumbles to Snap under his breath and he’s only half joking. He’s a jungle brat and even Hosnian Prime’s temperate weather was too chilly for him. He’ll die if they go to Hoth that’s for sure.

“And lastly we have D’Qar,” Bastian says, projecting the imagine of a big green planet onto the central table, “Close enough to Naboo that ships travelling through that area won’t be suspicious, but it’s a treacherous bit of flying between them so not many people will want to go there of their own free will. It’s the only planet in the Ileenium system and there’s only one pathway through the asteroid field, pretty easy to get into if you know how, but not much reason for anyone to do so.”

“No intelligent life, but there’s evidence of a past civilisation with some ruins left behind that could be incorporated into a base, and a wide range of flora and fauna,” Jess gives Poe a sly smile, “it’s mostly a jungle world.”

His head perks up, eyes glinting with interest. “I vote D’Qar,” he says with a grin and Leia rolls her eyes at him in return.

“We’ll have a proper vote and send more scouts to the top two locations,” she announces once Jess and Bastian finish off their presentations, “Commander Dameron you can lead one and Captain Wexley will lead the other.”

Maybe Poe’s enthusiasm really is infectious because D’Qar wins by five votes and no one even thinks about stopping him from leading the expedition there and leaving Snap to deal with Yout, some barren rotten little planet with far too many moons and not enough forests. He practically skips to his X-Wing, BB-8 chirping behind him, Jess and Karé following and snickering behind their hands.

“This is Black Leader, are we ready for take-off?” he sing-songs into his comm after he finishes his pre-flight checks.

_“This is Black Three, I would like to remind Black Leader that this is a serious mission and not just an excuse to visit a jungle world,”_ Jess teases and Poe twists around in the cockpit to glare at her.

“ _This is Black Two and I would like to remind both of you that we’re holding everyone up in the hangars,”_ Karé chimes in and Poe just rolls his eyes before giving them the signal for take-off.

It looks like a pretty easy flight, they only have to jump out of hyperspace once to change trajectory and then they’re in the Illeenium system, just be a smooth five-hour journey from their current position. He hums and leans back as they jump into hyperspace, there’s nothing much for him to do now apart from chatter with BB-8 and maybe have a bit of a nap. The ship thrums peacefully around him as they fly.

His ship is painted a pretty black and orange, it had gotten a bit scraped up a few missions ago and they’d run out of the standard silver and blue paint. It’s distinctive, instantly recognisable as Poe’s and his heart thrums at the idea that this is _his ship_ , not just equipment on loan to him during his service. He’ll fly it for as long as he possibly can, he promises himself.

“Pulling out of hyperspace now,” he says into his comm when they’re almost at their destination, “Pava you know the path through the asteroid field, you lead.”

“ _Whatever you say, Dameron,_ ” she says as they prepare to drop out of hyperspeed.

They drop out smoothly, just beyond is a large field of asteroids, every single one more than ten times the size of their ships and the field looms for light years up and down. It’s certainly intimidating – not somewhere you would just want to fly for fun, but the pathway of coordinates Pava sends them is easy flying and big enough to fit a star cruiser through. He has a real good feeling about this place.

D’Qar itself sits just beyond, it makes Poe’s skin tingle with excitement at all that green, almost the entire planet covered in forests. He can barely stop himself from diving down immediately, but a mission is a mission.

“Alright let’s deploy the scanners,” he says, half to Karé and Pava and half to BB-8 who beeps and whirs behind him, “should take around half an hour to scan the entire thing – let’s hurry up so we can get down there.”

It’s almost fun, skimming the edge of atmo and circling the planet in low and lazy loops, passing the other two every few minutes. The surface is beautiful, just endless lush green, broken only by the occasional glimmering blue lake and a white spine of mountains.

‘ _Scan complete,’_ BB-8 beeps, _‘calculating best landing position. From initial readings D’Qar has an 83% resemblance to Yavin 4. Friend-Poe will be greatly adapted to the climate and wildlife.’_

“Shut it BB,” he groans as Jess and Karé snicker down the comms, “alright let’s land everyone.”

The clearing they land in is perfect, a field of thick grass in the middle of the forest with a lake not too far away and rolling hills giving way to mountains just beyond that. They’ve barely settled on the ground before Poe is already jumping out of the cockpit and tumbling onto the grass with a laugh, BB-8 whirring around him.

“I told you you’d like it,” Jess grins when she gets out and Poe is already running towards the treeline to breathe in the thick humid smell of the jungle he’s missed so much.

He turns and grins at them, throwing his hands into the air with a shout, “this place is perfect – it’s almost exactly like Yavin. A bit less swampy, but you know I think I can deal with that.”

“Yes, just what we’re looking for: a planet exactly like Yavin,” Karé teases, bumping him with her hip but she’s smiling as well, before looking down at the holopad, “looks like our scans were pretty accurate. We can scout around a little further, maybe get a look at that lake and we can do some purity tests to see if it can be made drinkable – that’ll be huge.”

They spend the next three hours carefully mapping the clearing and surrounding areas, checking for anything their scans didn’t pick up. The humidity leaves them drenched with sweat and they end up unzipping the top of their flightsuits and tying them around their waists to try and keep cool. It’s still a little cooler than Yavin is though, Poe thinks with a relieved sigh, he doesn’t think most of the people in the Resistance would have appreciated Yavin 4’s heat.

“Kriff that’s beautiful,” Karé murmurs when they finally break free of the treeline again and the lake stretches clear and blue in-front of them. It’s so clear that they can see all the way to the pebbly bottom with its shoals of translucent fish scattering when their shadows hit the water.

“Ugh let’s take a break – I’m not used to this kinda weather,” Jess flops down onto the ground and stretches her legs out, sweeping her sweaty hair back and Poe gladly follows suit.

It only takes twenty more minutes for Jess and Karé to get bored again, they strip out of their flightsuits and run screaming into the water, gasping at how cold it is.

“C’mon Dameron you boring old flyboy,” Jess shouts, shaking her bare ass at him, “get in here before we drag you in.”

“Don’t you kriffing dare,” he says, trying to back away, but he trips over BB-8 who practically wheezes in excitement, “at least let me take my flightsuit off – oh Force – wait–”

The flight back is much less fun, mostly because his flightsuit is still wet and the thick material sticks and chafes his skin. It also gets so humid in the cockpit that fog starts to gather on the transparisteel and BB-8 has to make a series of adjustments to the life-support system to make sure Poe can actually see.

“How the kriff am I supposed to explain why I’m soaking wet,” he whines as they drop out of hyperspace near the Echo of Hope, “and my hair is a complete mess.”

“ _Oh no, how will your adoring fans cope?”_ Jess sighs and Poe swears that the only reason he doesn’t shoot her out of the sky is because he’s a good commander and friend. He wishes so desperately that he wasn’t.

“Commander Dameron, what happened?” a nervous looking flight tech asks when he lands and there’s a blast of humidity as the cockpit opens. He glares so hard at Jess and Karé that they almost fall from laughing when they climb out of their X-Wings.

“There was a mutiny,” he starts dramatically, ignoring how his boots actually squelch when he jumps out and Jess collapses to the ground laughing, “I was thrown into a lake trying to defend the Resistance.”

“Oh no,” the tech’s eyes go wide and a blush rises high on their cheeks as Poe starts unzipping his flightsuit in the hangar, anything to get the wet material off him.

“Stop giving your fans heart attacks, Dameron,” Iolo catcalls from somewhere else in the hangar and the tech blushes so bright Poe thinks they might actually just combust on the spot.

“Just ignore them, buddy,” he tries for a kind smile and he thinks he just makes it worse, “they make fun of anything that moves. Don’t you, assholes?” He turns and shouts the last sentence across the hangar and just gets one of Jess’ cackles in return.

“Yessir,” the tech squeaks, saluting like Poe had just given them an order. He just grins again, shaking his head as he walks away and he tries his absolute best not to laugh when he hears them squeak behind him.

After that it’s so busy Poe barely has another second to think. He gets rushed from mission to mission as the Resistance rushes to distract the First Order from anything that could lead them to anywhere near D’Qar. He doesn’t get to sleep in a proper bed for at least two weeks, scraping by on naps in hyperspace and probably more stims than is really healthy.

By the time he lands in D’Qar again the base is already half built, but he barely has the energy to even notice it. He’s just coming off the end of one final stim he’d taken in the middle of a nasty clash with a squadron of TIEs that had dropped out of hyperspace right in-front of them. They won, no serious damage done but even Jess doesn’t say anything as they stagger out of their ships.

“Don’t even try give me a debrief,” Leia says, barely glancing up at Poe as he all but sleepwalks into the half-formed command centre, “go to sleep Dameron, before I have to knock you out.”

“Be my guest, general,” he grins, leaning heavily against a console. One of lieutenants gives him a half-disgusted look and he probably deserves it; he hasn’t showered in two weeks after all. “you could probably knock me out with a strong breeze right now.”

“Get out,” she says firmly, but kindly and he gives her a mocking salute that makes her smile just a little.

Honestly, he doesn’t even know where he’s going, but people very kindly push him in the right direction and he stumbles into a room with Bastian and Karé curled into one bed and Jess in the other. He practically falls onto her after he strips out of his flightsuit and she barely even stirs. The room probably stinks to high hell with four dirty pilots sleeping in it, but Poe doesn’t care right now, whatever happens is future-Poe’s problem.

He wakes up more than twenty hours later, face buried in someone’s hair that honestly smells rancid. He groans, trying to curl up onto himself and gets a bony fist in his stomach in response.

“Kriff, Pava,” he whines, trying to wriggle away, “stop punching me – it’s not fair.”

“You come into _my_ bed and you whine at _me_ about punching you,” she snaps, he cracks an eye open and stares at her angry face, hair sticking up in all directions, “get out Poe before I end you.”

He takes that as his cue to leave and he slowly unpeels himself from the delightful warmth of the blankets and blinks slowly at the bright room. It’s barely furnished and there’s no door he notices, this is probably just the first place they all found that had any sort of soft horizontal surface. It’s not the worst place he’s slept in, even though it really does smell. Bastian is leaning sleepily against the wall on the other bed, Karé snoring softly into the pillow and he snickers as Poe stands dejected for just a few seconds.

Together they crawl their way out of the room and Kaydel stops them dead in the corridor, shoving them in the direction of the fresher before they can get any further.

“You’re going to gas the entire base before it’s even built,” she says wrinkling her nose, directing them down the corridor whilst standing a very pointed two metres away from them.

Poe almost cries when he showers, the water’s cold, but it feels like he’s shedding a second skin after he’s done. Someone leaves them some clean clothes and they find steaming cups of caf and a plate of whatever rehydrated slop someone managed to cook up in a makeshift mess hall. Bastian moans so loudly when he eats it that they get several heads turning and staring at them with bright cheeks.

“I never thought I would be so happy to eat slop,” Bastian finally speaks after he’s finished half his plate in what looks like three mouthfuls, “ration bars are literally the worst thing ever.”

“You’re preaching to the choir here, buddy,” Poe grins and takes a big swig of caf. It burns bitter in his mouth, but anything is better than ration bars, literally anything.

One by one the pilots drop into the makeshift mess hall until there’s a thronging crowd around them filled with tired, happy people. They make way for Jess who drops down next to Poe and basically falls asleep again on his shoulder, wet hair plastered all over his back.

He doesn’t complain though, it’s easy like this, surrounded by people laughing and talking, people who care and who aren’t afraid to show it. Poe feels more at home on this planet he’s only ever spent a handful of hours on than he has for years on Hosnian Prime. His eyes crinkle when he laughs at something Karé says and he thinks maybe home really is more about the people than anything else.

“Poe, General wants to talk to you,” someone shouts at him and he carefully extracts himself again, heavy deja vu when Jess threatens to punch him again, but he slowly leans her onto Snap’s shoulder instead and steps out of the crowd.

The general looks like she’s barely moved from the spot she was in yesterday apart from a different outfit, still frowning and reading something on a holopad. She raises her head before Poe can even open his mouth and smiles warmly at him, he feels something happy rising up in his chest that he can’t contain.

“You look much better than you did yesterday,” she says evenly as he sits down in the chair next to her.

“That’s just a nice way of saying I looked like I’d been spaced yesterday,” he grins and she huffs good-naturedly.

“Your words, not mine,” but she looks like she’s on the edge of laughter he starts his report. He nods with a bubbling understand that this is where he belongs.

They get the week off after that, a different batch of pilots are sent off with the Echo of Hope to act as a decoy in case the First Order suspects anything is off, but it’s not exactly a restful time. They pitch in with the building even though the ground crew won’t stop complaining about the ‘goddamn flyboys getting in the way’. Poe still manages to charm his way into just about everything.

Everyone sleeps in a jumbled assortment of rooms whilst the barracks are getting built, just a mess of bodies on whatever bed they can find. He spends a few nights with Jess, another couple with Iolo and only one with Snap where they wake up spooning with hard ons and don’t look each other in the eye for days afterwards. It’s fun while it lasts but he can’t help but fall into his own bed when the pilots’ dorms finally get completed with a pleased groan.

He hasn’t had a room of his own since he was seventeen, well there were those odd few months when Muran and him weren’t together, but those don’t really count, not when he spent half of them in other people’s beds and the other times in his friends’. His heart pangs all of a sudden, he’s been so busy these past months that he’s barely had time to think about him, about Muran. There’s a rush of emotion in his stomach and he curls onto his side, tears spilling out that he doesn’t realise until he blinks and the room blurs around him.

He tries desperately to imagine what Muran would make of all this, how he would fit in here, but he can’t. Everything here is just so opposite to what Muran would like, all the disorganisation and chaos and complete and utter lack of rules to follow. He thinks that he might have genuinely had a heart attack if he saw what Poe and the other pilots were like now. It makes him smile just thinking about how he would scold them all.

BB-8 chirps at him worriedly, knocking gently into the side of the bed when Poe doesn’t respond immediately, and he turns to look at his funny little droid. A wet laugh crawls its up his throat and he pats BB-8’s head in a way that tries to be reassuring.

The grief is still there, raw and hurting, but maybe a little less every day. Maybe one day Poe will be able to remember Muran whilst laughing, whilst telling stories about all of the stupid things they used to do together. One day he might even tell them to someone else he loves. Not today, not any day soon, but one day. This is a new beginning, a new home, a new hope. Now Poe is still hurting, still crying, still living, but one day he will be whole enough to stand without aching.

The next mission they get sent on is just some recon and not even the drifting-around-a-planet-at-two-klicks-an-hour-with-all-your-shields-up-hoping-you-don’t-show-on-their-sensor’s kind. They take a shuttle (one that they get to pilot thank the stars) and land on some mid-rim market planet to nose around, see what people think about the Republic, the Resistance, the First Order, whatever’s buzzing around in the cantinas.

Oh, it really should be easy, Leia even had a sparkle in her eye when she assigned them this mission, it’s the kind of thing you assign to a new recruit if you’re a half-assed trainer. It’s definitely not something you give to six pilots with more than a lifetime’s military experience between them and expect them to kriff it up, but Poe as always loves to defy expectations.

When they get there, they split up into two groups of three to cover more ground, Bastian Snap and Jess go to slightly more upper-class cantina whilst Iolo, Karé and Poe go somewhere seedier. He grins at them and reminds them not to drink too much, only enough to fit in and be just a little happy.

“Okay Commander Stick-Up-Your-Ass,” Jess jeers and a mocking salute and Poe lunges at her for it, they spend the next five minutes jokingly wrestling on the ground before Jess accidentally pokes Poe in the eye and they spend the five minutes after that fussing over him.

“Thank the Force that they aren’t straight,” Iolo says with a sigh when they finally manage to establish that Poe’s eye is definitely alright, “can you imagine how horrifying they would be?”

“Don’t put that image in my head,” Karé groans as Jess and Poe immediately jump up to defend their hypothetical heterosexual relationship.

They break off into their smaller groups halfway along the main street, Karé, Iolo and Poe turning off into a smaller road where they can hear cantina music being blasted from. The place isn’t bad, the drinks are cheap and strong and the chairs are only a little sticky, one of the nicer dingy little bars Poe has been to in his life.

He sips his drink while he talks and it burns pleasantly as it goes down, much nicer than the grog they have back on base. The three of them end up having lines of people coming to talk to them, mostly just empty flirting, but occasionally they’ll let slip just a little bit of information that makes Poe’s toes curl with interest.

From what he hears this planet is no fan of the Republic, but the First Order is pretty hated too. They grumble about stormtrooper patrols and angry officers who think they can do anything they want and get away with it too. One Twi’lek shows Poe where the ends of one of her lekku was shot off by a drunk First Order officer who couldn’t take no for an answer. She doesn’t elaborate on what happens afterwards, but Poe can extrapolate from the way her body freezes in place.

“I’m sorry that happened – it shouldn’t happen. Someone needs to teach those First Order bastards a lesson,” he tries to grumble casually, but it’s hard to hide the burning anger in his eyes, he’s always been a bad liar after all. She notices and seems to relax just a touch.

“The Resistance,” she leans in and murmurs close to his ear, curling a hand into his hair like she’s just flirting, “I’ve heard rumours about a new Rebel Alliance opposed to the First Order – I want to join.”

“I have this month’s comm information for the Resistance broadcast,” he replies, slipping a chip into her hand, “they’ll tell you where to go, what to do.”

She nods bright and brave, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek before she disappears into the crowd again.

The rest of the night is much less exciting, the later it gets the less people want to talk and the more they want to dance or do something else entirely. Poe ends up with more lips on his skin than he really wants to have, the ideal number being zero. He manages to finally escape one woman who had a too tight grip on his jacket and breath that smelled like a ranthar’s and slinks into a dark booth in the back where Iolo is hiding as well.

“I don’t know how Karé does it,” he sighs when he finally sits, stretching out his back. She’s almost glowing, a long line of women queued around to talk to her and laughing along with everything she says.

“She’s a force of nature,” Iolo replies with a dry laugh, “get anything good?”

“One potential new recruit and a whole list of reasons why people hate the First Order on this planet,” Poe smiles sadly, his hair dropping over his eyes as he drops his head forwards.

“Your hair’s longer,” Iolo says after a while, gently twisting one of Poe’s curls around his finger, “it suits you better than that short military cut ever did. You’re happier now, much happier than you were in the Republic Navy.”

He blinks slowly, thinking through Iolo’s words, “I think so. Maybe a lot of things were holding me back. I feel guilty about it though, like I should be sadder that Muran isn’t here. I wish he – that he was still alive, but everything that happened afterwards – I don’t regret it.”

“Good,” Iolo says firmly, squeezing his shoulder, “you shouldn’t regret it – don’t regret being happy, Poe. We all miss him, but we can’t stay in the past because of it.”

He smiles, blinking back tears and Iolo pulls him into a proper hug, pressing a kiss to the top of his head.

Karé comes and joins them half an hour later and Poe grins at the two of them, it’s been a while since he’s just hung out with just the two of them, nobody else, and even if this is technically in the middle of a mission it’s nice. The talk and bicker about meaningless things, it leaves a bubble of warmth in Poe’s stomach that is only partly to do with the alcohol.

By the time they leave the bar it’s still disorientatingly bright outside, it takes Poe a minute to remember this planet forty-hour rotations as they stumble out into the street. The markets are winding down for the day as the sun begins its slow descent, the crowds easy enough to cut through without too much pushing.

They stop at some food stalls to get something to eat before they get back to the shuttle, greasy finger foods that’ll make them feel sick in a couple of hours but smell like the best thing ever now. Poe glances around the crowd, relaxed. His first mistake.

“Poe Dameron?” someone says and he turns on instinct. A few metres away from him a young man stands with fury etched over his face and a blaster in his hands. “I said last time if I ever saw your dirty face again, I’d kill you just like you killed my family.”

“Hey now, buddy – calm down,” he says, but he barely has time to blink before he’s suddenly being thrown onto his ass.

The pain hits a second later and he gasps out a breath. Everything burns, his entire abdomen feels like it’s on fire. The world blurs around him and he vaguely hears the sound of shouting something that sounds like his name. He feels the ground against his back, when did he lie down? But lying down feels like a good idea right now, maybe sleeping. Yeah, sleeping sounds good. The world starts to blur black on the edges and he can’t really feel his eyes closing.

He's wrenched back, someone dragging him upright and he can feel his mouth moving and sounds coming out, but he’s not too sure what he’s saying.

“Poe, come on,” someone says and their voice is so familiar. Their hands are warm around his shoulders and arm and Poe sags into their embrace.

“Hurts,” he realises he’s saying and inhales deeply again. Smells like Iolo, he wonders where Iolo is right now. He misses him.

“I know it hurts Poe, but we gotta keep moving. Karé’s got the guy and the local police should be coming, but we gotta get you back to the shuttle. We’re getting you back to base, don’t you worry,” he’s rambling and Poe smiles big and dopey. Iolo’s right here, man he loves Iolo so much and he tells him that and only gets a small nervous smile in response. He shouts something down his comm and Poe wobbles when the ground suddenly tilts around him.

“Just lie here, come on, don’t worry Poe,” someone else says and guides him onto something that’s soft against his skin.

“Just gonna have a nap,” he mumbles trying to close his eyes and someone shakes him awake, it hurts a lot when he moves and he whines in response. He wants to curl up into a ball, but that involves a lot of moving so he doesn’t.

“He’s in shock, someone get a medkit out here,” someone else shouts and he thinks that’s Snap. He squints up at them and Bastian is saying something low and soothing as he starts taking off Poe’s shirt.

“What about Iolo?” he says scandalised when he’s shirtless, “I can’t do that to him – he’s my best friend.”

“I don’t think he’ll mind,” Bastian says with a smile and Poe jolts with pain when his hands touch his stomach, “blaster shot, missed everything important I think and didn’t fully penetrate. I’m gonna put some bandages on and it’s gonna make everything feel better, okay?”

Poe just grumbles in response and they do make it feel better, if only just by a little bit. When he closes his eyes he can hear the low thrum of the engine below him and it soothes him enough to drift off to sleep, even with the sound of shouting around him.

He wakes up in the medbay a while later, head swimming and confused. He tries to get up but there’s a heavy weight on his stomach and his limbs don’t really want to fully cooperate with him at the moment. He leans back with a groan and Dr Kalonia appears around from around the curtain like she was summoned.

“You’re finally awake, Dameron,” she says with a small smile as she starts checking his vitals.

“How long was I out for?” he manages to say even though his mouth feels like it’s stuffed with cotton balls. He winces as she prods around his stomach, meds muffling the pain to just a dull ache.

“Only a few hours – all your friends were so worried about you I had to make the General command them to get out,” she taps something onto a holopad before brushing the sweat damp hair off from his forehead, “I heard a lot about you from my colleagues in the Republic and I was hoping you wouldn’t be cluttering up my medbay all the time like you did back then, maybe I was being too optimistic.”

He laughs at that, he was even more reckless when he was younger and he knew the Republic Navy medbay intimately well. He’s surprised he hasn’t been to the Resistance one more already, but maybe he’s gotten lucky. Not so much anymore.

“I’ll try my best,” he promises with what he hopes is a joking grin and she just rolls her eyes.

“You flyboys always do,” she sighs, shaking her head as she walks away, “get some more sleep – we’ll go through your treatment plan in the morning.”

He doesn’t need to be told twice, the fog in his head already creeping up fast and he’s passed out before he can even close his eyes properly.

Kalonia puts him on bed rest for the next week, grounded for the week after that as well with physiotherapy to make sure his stomach muscles grow back as strong as they were before. It gives him a lot of time to think, brooding over what had happened and running it back in his mind again and again.

He hadn’t recognised that guy, not instantly and the more he thought about it the more his face looks familiar, but he’s not too sure if it’s all in his head. He didn’t really go around murdering people’s families either but he sure as hell has a lot of people who would kill him if they saw him again. It came with the job, arresting pirates, breaking up smuggling rings, it’s not hard to be hated by a lot of people.

Still it grates on him, every moment he’s alone, in-between the times when his friends come to visit him, that he’s the one who hurt this kid, hurt them so bad they’d kill for it. He sighs, putting down his holopad and BB-8 chirps at him from his bedside.

“It’s nothing, BB. Don’t worry about it, buddy,” he sighs, running a hand through his hair. Iolo was right, it’s getting long, ridiculously long, enough that it’s gonna be a hassle to take care of it when he’s back in active service. He’ll get it cut, not as short as it was before (never again, he promises himself), but enough that it’s more tameable than it is right now.

_‘Friend-Poe is in distress. Friend-Poe is always sighing, estimated 78% increase from the average indicating a negative mental state. Friend-Poe will tell BB-8 what is wrong,’_ it beeps and the ‘or else’ is left unsaid.

“Seriously BB, it’s not a problem I just got a lot to think about these days,” he tries for casual and the droid makes an angry revving sound like he’s about to try set Poe’s sheets on fire. Kalonia will definitely kill him if that happens.

“The droid’s right,” comes a voice and Poe tries to jump to attention on instinct but ends up just wincing as the movement jolts the new flesh growing on his abdomen. “At ease, soldier,” Leia says with a smile and sits on the chair by Poe’s bed. BB-8 whirls around in a panic, beeping randomly until Poe shoos him out to the hangar.

“You know I’ve never met someone so attached to a droid, apart from maybe my brother,” Leia laughs when Poe finally manages to finally get him out, “it’s good to see pilots still care about their droids so much.”

“Don’t look at Pava then,” he jokes, “you know the mech droids have started to call her the Great Destroyer? Can’t seem to keep one.”

“Hmm,” she laughs and they sit there in a comfortable silence for a little while before she continues, “so will you tell me what’s been bothering you, or do I need to sit here all day?”

He blinks, surprised. Poe Dameron is by no means a good liar, most people would call him a terrible one in fact, but he’s pretty good at keeping some things hidden. Leia just smiles again, small and non-judgemental.

“I was thinking about the man who shot me,” he starts, fiddling with the edge of the sheets and not looking her in the eye, “what he said, that I killed his family. I don’t remember doing that, but I’ve done a lot of things in the navy, I guess to a lot of people I’m the bad guy. I never really thought about it that way before.”

Leia just hums thoughtfully, leaning back as if she’s pondering that thought too.

“Everyone is the villain in someone’s story,” she says after a while, “you can’t control how other people think of you, you can only make your own choices. There are plenty of people in the Republic who think that I’m a fanatic and a traitor, who think the same of you. What they think doesn’t mean a thing.”

“I guess so,” he replies quietly and she reaches out to squeeze his hand tight in hers, reassuring. The tension feels like it bleeds out his shoulders and he sags a little bit at her touch.

The great Leia Organa, a legend, a princess, now a general, has never felt more human than she has right now, sitting with a wounded pilot in the medbay. She’s still terrifying, don’t get Poe wrong, but it’s more because she feels so human than despite it, like she’s capable of kindness in equal measure to her cruelty.

“We’re fighting for all of these people, the ones who want me dead, who want you dead. The smugglers, the spice runners, the people who’ve hurt you before, the ones that will hurt you in the future, we’re fighting for the freedom of the entire galaxy. We can only make our own decisions. Would you stop fighting because you know someone wants you dead?” she asks and he shakes his head frantically. He wouldn’t, it doesn’t matter even though it feels like it does now because Poe won’t stop fighting until he can’t stand anymore.

She leaves him to think about it and he stares up at the ceiling, tracing invisible patterns with his eyes until everything starts to blur around him. His own choices, his own actions. Poe was definitely a villain to a lot of people, to all the smugglers and pirates, to the independent worlds who saw the Republic as taking away their freedoms, to the stormtroopers who see him as death from the skies.

He sighs and closes his eyes. Maybe this should’ve been something he’s thought about before, maybe. But all he can do is make his own choices, fight his own fight. He’ll try his best to protect the galaxy even if it’s filled with people who would rather he’s dead, because that’s just what he can do. His own choices, he thinks, that’s all he can control, as he drifts off back into a medicated sleep.


	4. lose your way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe breaks, breaks, breaks until there's nothing left to be broken anymore. Only then does he finally allow himself to heal again.
> 
> (pls read the notes at the beginning!)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warning for descriptions of torture, panic attacks, other symptoms of ptsd and just generally like not healthy coping mechanisms and ways of thinking. theres no direct suicidal ideation BUT theres a lot of not exactly wanting to live either. pls pls pls if any of these things trigger u in any way don't read this chapter and don't feel like its a cop out to stop if something triggers u bc ur mental health needs to come first! I just want to rlly emphasise this bc I've read too many fics where things aren't tagged properly and I've ended up freaking out so..... stay safe everybody! 
> 
> also some of the descriptions of panic attacks, etc r based on my own experiences so may not reflect how u or other ppl experience mental health issues. I've tried to do of research abt how ptsd can manifest but bc of the limitations of how I'm structuring this fic not all of them r addressed but if there r any problems don't hesitate to tell me!
> 
> I will say that this is the most painful chapter and I'm p sure the longest as well so what does that say abt me..... but anyways theres happy bits (Finn!! Rey!! Jess!!) and a hopeful? ending (yay to healing!) to this chapter so pls look forwards to that and remember its all up from here (mostly)!

This mission isn’t easy, it was never supposed to be easy, was never going to be easy, but it goes wrong in a much more spectacular way than Poe could’ve ever dreamed of. It isn’t the first time he’s been captured, or even the first time he’s been tortured, and at least he knows that as long as he’s here strapped into the interrogation chair then BB-8 still hasn’t been captured. The Resistance lives on, fights on. BB-8 will manage to find its way back somehow, as long as Poe doesn’t slip up, he just knows it.

Physical torture is well – not to state the obvious, but it’s painful. Excruciatingly, but Poe has discovered this handy trick that if he’s screaming his lungs out then he’s not giving away any useful information. He should tell them to put that in the Academy training. He’s also trying his absolute best not to panic because the second he panics then everything is really going to go to shit. Instead he focuses on listing all the things that he loves the most in the galaxy, all the things he’s going to miss when they inevitably kill him.

_His dad, flying his X-Wing, his friends, BB-8, how everything is just so damn funny when he gets wine drunk._

There’s a dull thudding sound as a fist meets his ribcage. They leave just enough time for him to gasp in a breath before they punch him again. Again. Again. Something cracks inside of him and he can feel blood fill his mouth when he takes a deep breath.

_The meaty stew from the Academy, the feeling of a hot shower and then crawling into fresh sheets after a long mission, a new shipment of food with a box of his favourite sweets from Yavin._

They inject him with something that makes his blood burn inside of him, like he’s being set on fire from the inside out. Every centimetre of him, inside his bones, inside his brain. It only lasts for a minute, maybe even less but it feels much more like a lifetime. Breathing hurts more than anything else. He screams because there’s nothing else to do, it’s the only thing that reminds him he’s still human somewhere amongst the pain.

_Being able to be useful to the Resistance, knowing that you’re making a real difference to the Galaxy, kissing someone he loves, flying in his mother’s A-Wing._

They stop eventually, he’s not too sure how long it’s been. Just that after a while the waves of pain start to slowly die down and he realises that he’s the only person in the room again. He tries to take a deep breath and mentally checks in on his body. Still got all four limbs, nothing major broken, only maybe a few ribs. It’s alright, he’s had worse after a few bad crashes, nothing Kalonia can’t fix up if he ever manages to get out of here. He wriggles against the restraints and nothing budges in the slightest, metal tight against every limb, he can’t move anything apart from his head.

The doors slide open with a hiss and a dark cloaked figure enters, Poe can’t help but laugh. Kylo Ren, technically they’d both been at the Academy together, back when he was still Ben Solo and had a soul. He was two years younger and in the Jedi track not the pilot one, obviously. They’d never met, Poe had never even known about his existence until Kylo Ren decided the best course of action was to murder all his classmates. Then he’d known, everyone had known.

“I didn’t know we had the best pilot in the Resistance on board,” he drawls, voice distorted behind his mask. If Poe wasn’t still in pain, he might have laughed at this wannabe Vader cosplay, but instead he does his best to keep a straight face, “comfortable?”

“Not really,” he says, trying his best to remain stoic and still. He doesn’t flinch when Kylo Ren stalks closer, his stupid cloak swishing as he walks.

“I’m impressed, no one has been able to get out of you what you did with the map,” he continues and as he steps into the light Poe really has to hold back a snort, the mask is stupid, his whole weird aura thing is stupid.

“You might wanna rethink your technique,” he says and tries not to think about why he shouldn’t be taunting the Force user who has him strapped into a torture chair. He’s a bit of an idiot sometimes, just a little bit, but he thinks that the outcome was always going to be the same regardless.

Then all of a sudden Poe feels him. Feels Kylo Ren inside his head, inside his goddamn head. He tries to stop him, he puts up a wall just like Leia had mentioned before, but he cuts through it like butter. He’s inside Poe’s head. Touching everything, riffling through everything. It’s an agony beyond feeling, beyond words. There’s no pain, there’s something beyond pain. The human body isn’t designed to be able to translate a mind being ripped apart into physical sensations.

“The Resistance will not be intimidated,” he manages to gasp out even as the breath stops entering his lungs.

He tries, he tries so goddamn hard to hide his memory of giving the map to BB-8 back in the darkest recesses of his mind, but he’s no Jedi. It’s useless. Kylo Ren just digs his leather fingers deeper and Poe slams his head backwards to try get away. He can’t, he can’t escape. He inside Poe’s mind. He runs his dirty fingers all over Poe’s most cherished memories: flying with his mother, meeting Iolo in that crowded room, teaching Jess how to dance, kissing Muran for the first time, that first breakfast on D’Qar.

Everything, he can see everything Poe has ever seen, has ever thought, has ever felt. He brings it up, replays it, makes it so overwhelming Poe doesn’t even know what to do anymore apart from scream and scream and scream until his throat is bloody and raw. He watches Muran die again and again, watches his mother die, watches all the people he could never save die, die, die and he can’t do anything but scream.

‘ _Ah,’_ he can hear his voice echoing in his head, ‘ _here it is.’_

He plucks it straight out of Poe’s memories and walks out. Leaves Poe limp and gasping, trying to reconstruct his own mind. At the end the only thing he has to be proud of is that nothing ever came out of his own mouth. It’s not enough though and Poe will be stuck dying in this cell whilst the Resistance is slowly but surely destroyed. He hangs his head in exhaustion whilst a stormtrooper enters the room to guard him. It takes all of his strength just not to cry. He won’t let them have that at least.

He barely understands what’s happening when a stormtrooper unlocks his restraints and starts leading him down the corridor, blaster to his back. He’s probably going to be executed now, at least he won’t give them any more information. He’s just a little bit grateful for that at least.

Then all of a sudden, he’s being shoved into a niche in the wall and the stormtrooper is babbling something fast, too fast for Poe’s tortured brain to understand.

“What?” he asks, and he thinks this must be another one of Ren’s mindtricks, something to get his hopes up, make him believe he can escape before dragging him back to reality by the hair.

He won’t fall for it, he’s not that dumb, but then the stormtrooper takes his helmet off and Poe’s careful logic falls to pieces around him. There’s a wild fear in his eyes that doesn’t look like anything Ren could ever dream up, far too human, far too real. Poe feels his breath stop in his lungs. He’s pretty too.

“This is a rescue,” the pretty stormtrooper says, gripping Poe’s arm too tight, “I’m helping you escape. Can you fly a TIE Fighter?”

“Are you with the Resistance?” he asks because that’s the only thing that makes sense right now. Who’s ever heard of a stormtrooper defecting? Of a stormtrooper helping a prisoner escape? Poe certainly hasn’t.

“No, I’m breaking you out – can you fly a TIE Fighter?” he asks again, leaning forwards and the thought flashes through Poe’s head that he could just lean forwards and kiss him. It’s a stupid idea, but maybe that means his brain is finally getting it together enough to think in its normal stupid way.

“I can fly anything,” he interrupts and he’s sure of that at least. A couple hours in an interrogation cell won’t have changed that. It’s the only thing he really has left of himself. He’s a pilot, he can fly, he can be useful to the Resistance in that way. A burst of hope floods through his veins and he grins at the trooper, sees his own enthusiasm start to be reflected back. They can do this, maybe they can really kriffing pull this off.

And they do, for just those few minutes they really do something together. It might have been the adrenalin talking, but there’s something more than a natural chemistry between them. Poe flying, offering the stormtrooper a name, him taking it. Poe Dameron and Finn. It works, it clicks.

For those few minutes as Poe scrambles to get control of the ship and Finn manages to shoot down those canons first try, it’s something unbelievable. Even as his body aches with the exertion of it all he laughs, bright and easy like this is just another mission, like Finn is just another man.

It ends all too abruptly.

He wakes up in the night, cold sand pressed against his cheeks, his legs buried in the stuff. There’s a brief moment where he can’t feel them and he panics, scrambling around to try and orientate himself, but then he’s lying on his back, arms and legs outstretched and gasping up into the sky. There are so many stars, bright cold and white against black. He remembers once he’d said something along the lines of ‘I belong to the sky’ and he’s never felt so wrong before, stranded in the desert, alone.

  
“Finn,” he shouts into the darkness when he gathers himself enough to stagger to his feet, shivering violently as a gust of cold wind almost brings him back to his knees, “Finn? Are you there? Is there anyone there?”

The wind just whips the words straight out of his mouth and away into the desert without bringing him back a response. He shudders again, right leg buckling beneath him and he collapses to the ground. He doesn’t have his jacket anymore, must have gotten lost in the crash and he grips his shoulders tightly to try conjure up the warmth and comfort it brought him. His fingers shake when he reaches inside his shirt to touch his mother’s ring, that’s still there at least. He brings it up to his lips, pressing a trembling kiss to it.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers as he lets it drop back down, “I’m sorry I failed.”

He lies there, alone in the empty desert thinking about his father, the Resistance, his friends who will all die because of his failure. Thinking about that poor stormtrooper, Finn, who only had a few minutes of freedom. There’s no one there to see him cry, curled up and sobbing into the desolate darkness.

It’s some miracle that he wakes up the next morning, spitting out sand from his mouth. He can feel every single part of his body hurting, everything that the overwhelming grief and adrenalin had blocked yesterday. He groans, hunched over as the sun already blazes far too hot against his exposed skin and wishes for a second that he could just die here, anything to stop this, but he gets up anyways.

“You can always do more living for people than dying for them,” he mutters to himself like a curse as he manages to stagger to his feet. He’s have failed, he probably won’t have a Resistance to get back to, but Poe will carry on living, carry on fighting, no matter what. There’s always more you can do, always something you can do whilst you’re still breathing, he tries to convince himself. First, he just has to get out of this Force forsaken desert alive.

It’s a second miracle that he’s actually able to do that. When he reaches town, nobody cares that he’s a Resistance commander, even less that he’s a former Republic commander, but he’s a decent mechanic and more importantly a pretty good storyteller.

It starts off with one curious kid who asks him where he’s from and he ends up surrounded by people around a blazing fire, listening enraptured to his stories. The people here on Jakku are hardened by scarcity and the never-ending deserts, but they’re still sentients. The excitement of a galaxy beyond their scrapper planet is enough to bring them slowly into the warmth of the fire to listen to Poe.

They don’t give him much in return, but he’s offered a few bites to eat, a couple of gulps out of waterskins and a shed floor to sleep on for the night. And in the morning one of the people who had sat in a dark corner and listened for the whole night offers Poe a job on one of his ships, going off Jakku in a few hours.

“You’ll get paid with a place to sleep and food,” he says gruffly as Poe eagerly nods, “you’ll work on the ship, same as every other man on my crew, but you’ll carry on telling your little stories in the evening.”

He grins, big and wide before shaking hands with him.

It’s slightly easier once he gets off Jakku and his actual skillsets become a little more useful, he scrapes by planet-hopping by working as a mechanic on ships that may or may not be operating legally. He grits his teeth and lets it slide, he can’t do anything about it either apart from hunch up and try not to notice the smell of spice wafting out of crates.

There’s no way for him to contact the Resistance, he can’t get a message to anyone on public comms if he doesn’t want to expose their locations and he doesn’t have this month’s Resistance broadcast codes. So, he goes to the only place he can think of where he’ll be welcomed no matter what.

Yavin 4 is just as beautiful as it always has been, green rushing up towards the ship as Poe stares out of a spaceport. He winces as he walks off, waving goodbye to a few of the crew who he’s made some sort of friends with. This was the easiest one yet, as soon as he’d slipped a Yavin tang to his speech they slapped him on the back and ushered him on.

His entire body aches, days of hard work after being tortured out of his mind finally catching up to him as he steps down onto the dirt. The humidity sticks in his lungs and suddenly everything feels like too much because all this time he’s been running with half a mind that this is all just a vivid hallucination, but this is real. He knows it as sure as anything in the galaxy, nothing could be as vivid as the smell of the jungle after the rain.

He takes another step forward, but his body finally revolts, his vision blurring as his legs begin to buckle beneath him. Someone catches him before he can hit the ground and he groans, struggling to put his weight back on his legs as he blinks blearily up at them.

“Someone get Kes,” he shouts and Poe feels his stomach drop at that voice – even all these years later, hearing Dáire makes him nauseous, “Stars above, Dameron, what do they do to you in the Republic?”

“First Order,” he slurs out before he can stop himself, “First Order did this. They’ve done worse.”

He swears quietly to himself as Poe finally manages to stand on his own two feet, the wave of dizziness passing, but Dáire still keeps a careful hand on his shoulder. The curdling in his stomach has calmed down as well and he’s just a little grateful that Dáire stays with him.

“Poe?” he whips around at the sound of his dad’s voice, ignoring how the ground shifts unnaturally under his feet, “Poe – they told me you were dead. They told me you were _dead_.”

He runs, doesn’t care if he falls and he almost trips over his own feet as he rushes into his dad’s arms, slamming into him so hard it winds them both, but nothing matters, nothing matters at all because Poe’s home, Poe’s finally really home.

“Dad,” he manages to gasp out, “Dad I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m okay, I’m alive. I’m here.”

“Poe, Poe I thought – I thought they’d taken you away from me, taken my son, my only baby,” he holds Poe’s face tenderly in his own, voice breaking as he speaks, “Force what have they done to you? What did they do?”

“I’m here,” he tries to smile through his tears, pressing his own trembling hands against his dad’s, “please can we just go home. I really wanna go home.”

They go, Poe clinging to his dad’s back on the speeder and breathing in the smell of leather and oil and dirt. It’s something he had never really truly thought he’d experience again. When they get back to the house Kes warms him up a plate of food that he wolves down, he hasn’t eaten enough for a while really and he eats so quickly he feels sick afterwards, but it’s worth it.

“What happened, Poe?” Kes asks quietly after he’s finished eating and showering, Poe sitting on his childhood bed and gently rubbing a towel through his wet hair, “they told me you were on a mission, something important that only you could do and that you’d been captured, assumed dead.”

Poe’s throat closes up and he freezes in place, he doesn’t know what to say, how to tell his dad what had happened. “I failed the mission,” he starts and sees Kes open his mouth to disagree, but he continues on anyways, “I was sent to find a piece of information – something important and I found it, but the First Order found me at the same time. I gave it to BB-8 before I got captured and I don’t where it is right now. And the First Order–” he doesn’t want to tell him, but he has to, he knows he has to, “they tortured me. I didn’t tell them anything, but then–”

His voice breaks and Kes rushes forwards, pulling him into a hug so his face is buried in his chest and all he can feel is his safe anchored embrace. He doesn’t realise he’s crying until his shoulders shudder when he tries to breathe in, and he makes a small pained sound before Kes is pushing him back onto the bed and scrambling to get his shirt off. His chest is mottled with bruises, a canvass of blues and purples and greens and Kes shakes his head, horrified.

“Poe,” he gasps out, “I’m getting a doctor from town, how did you hide this? Why did you hide this?”

“Don’t – don’t do that. I can’t let anyone else know I’m here – what if they come? What if they come for you?” he tries to sit up and falls back with another wince and he can already hear his dad talking on the comm.

“What they did to you – what they did,” his dad says quietly when he comes back in, hands not daring to touch Poe’s chest, “Poe, my baby, my baby. How could they hurt my baby like this?”

“It’s alright dad, I’m here, I’m still here, I’m not going anywhere,” he says and it’s a lie, they both know that as soon as Poe can walk he’ll be gone again, back to the Resistance, back to fighting in a war that should have ended a generation ago. He might not come back next time, he might really be dead and Kes will have lost everything he’s ever loved to this cursed war.

“How – how did you escape?” Kes asks, squeezing Poe’s hand gently.

“A stormtrooper helped me,” his head swims just thinking about him. Finn who helped him, Finn who saved him, Finn who let Poe give him a name and was a natural gunner and only had a few minutes of freedom before Poe got him killed, “his name was Finn. He defected – we stole a TIE together and escaped, but he – the First Order shot us down and when I woke up there was no wreckage, no him. I managed to find my way back here.”

“Finn,” his dad whispers, “he was a hero. For sacrificing himself, for doing all of that. The Force brought him to you so that you could bring yourself back to me,” he says sadly, brushing his fingers against Poe’s face, “I cannot thank him enough for that.”

“A hero,” Poe murmurs to himself as Kes goes downstairs to let the doctor in, “Finn the hero.”

It fits nicely, he thinks as they press a mask over his face and he starts to slowly go to sleep, Finn the hero, Finn his hero. He wishes he was still alive so Poe could tell him that.

As soon as he’s awake again, Poe manages to contact the Resistance and there’s just a series of relieved voices fighting over the comm on the other end. He almost cries with laughter, but he still has to tell Leia he’s failed. She scolds him quietly for talking like that, “there’s always more opportunities, Poe. I’m just glad that my most trusted and best pilot is still alright. Take another week off, we’ll send Snap to come get you after that.”

Something twists bitter in his gut, but he just ducks his head and nods. It’ll be nice to spend more time with his dad, even if it has to be under these kinds of circumstances. When his dad is away in the fields Poe spends his time in the shed with his mother’s A-Wing, he tries his best not to think about the dark stains on all his memories from here as he tinkers on it.

He doesn’t sleep much either, every time he does he wakes up screaming in the night, certain that he’s back on the Finalizer until his dad rushes in and holds him, murmuring reassurances. It’s better sometimes if he doesn’t sleep, doesn’t disturb his dad, doesn’t make him worry and he wanders around the garden in the night, listening to the Force tree’s leaves chime quietly in the wind.

He’s a wreck, dark circles under his eyes and so goddamn tired all the time, his hands shake as some side effect of whatever the kriff they’d injected him with. The doctor in town doesn’t know how long it’ll last, isn’t even sure what the hell it was, but it’s fried his nerves just a little bit. He knows he can still fly at least and that’s the only relief he has.

He holds his dad for a long time when Snap arrives and they load a crate full of melons onto the ship for the Resistance, Poe’s bag filled with snacks that Kes knows are hard to find elsewhere.

“I’ll come back,” he says when they finally let go, “don’t worry dad.”

“Oh, I’ll always worry, just be safe,” he squeezes Poe’s hands tightly, “and go get those bastards for me, alright? Give ‘em a special little bit of hell from Dameron senior. And just – come back to me, Poe. When you win this war, come back home.”

“I will, I promise,” Poe says with a small smile before he turns and walks away. He hopes this isn’t the last time.

So, Poe leaves his home and goes back to a completely different sort of home. It’s busy, a hive of constant activity that leaves Poe falling asleep on his feet and it means he usually gets at least five hours of actual sleep before his brain is tired enough to conjure up nightmares. His room isn’t very soundproof either, he has Jess or Snap barging in every other night to hold him as he tries to shake it off and the guilt is heavy in his chest at how tired they look in the mornings.

They don’t ask him what happened, they’ve seen the report. He doesn’t hide anything because there’s nothing to be ashamed of and he knows that. He knows that he wouldn’t think someone else was a failure because of this, but he can’t help but feel that bitter twist in his gut. He’s just an old, traumatised fuck-up pilot already beyond his prime. The only time he feels alive anymore is when he’s flying and his hands finally, finally stop shaking. He doesn’t tell anyone that though.

* * *

Poe’s in the middle of a tactical meeting talking with a source inside the New Republic when the transmission suddenly cuts dead. “What’s going on?” he asks and the tech just frowns, frantically typing something into the computer systems with a confused expression.

“Worry sir, there must be a glitch on the system because,” they frown even more, “it’s like they just disappeared? This shouldn’t be happening. Maybe they were compromised somehow?”

“What?” Poe sighs, rubbing his brow and frowning at the blank space where the hologram was, “is it definitely a problem on their side? Can you try rebooting our systems?”

“There’s no problem with our systems, I’ve run the diagnostics and nothings coming up,” they wrinkle their nose, banging a fist on the side of the machine, “what in the Force? This thing is supposed to be new and it’s telling me the entire Hosnian system is gone – who’re we even buying this kriff from? Come on.”

Suddenly someone bursts into the room, eyes so wild that they almost look like they’re going to pop out of their head, “sir you need to come to command centre immediately.” He runs, skidding in to see Leia with the blood drained out of her face, gripping the edge of the control panel like it’s the only thing keeping her upright.

“The Hosnian system was destroyed,” she says, voice monotone like she’s reading a script and Poe can’t help but laugh because that has to be a joke right? Just someone’s weird idea of a prank because star systems don’t just disappear, they can’t just be destroyed at the click of a button. That’s not possible. That can’t happen.

“I wish I was joking, Commander Dameron.”

He freezes in place. It can’t be possible. It’s a loss that can’t even begin to be described. This isn’t just Alderaan, this isn’t just a single planet, this is trillions of lives snuffed out in a single second. All he can hear is the roaring in his ears, the horrified murmurs of the people around him, the look of unending pain on Leia’s face.

“How is that even possible? An entire star system?” he asks and she just shakes her head. Leia has never looked frail before, he’s always seen her as all powerful, immortal, unshakable, but now she stands like a tree in high wind. He takes her by the hand and guides her to a chair, she gives him a small grateful smile in return.

“They have a weapon – something bigger than the Deathstar,” she looks quietly into the distance, “but this time we don’t know how to destroy it.”

“General, what do we do?” Poe’s mind is racing – the First Order could destroy the entire galaxy within a couple of weeks, certainly Coruscant will be next, the rest of the Core Worlds who don’t surrender will follow. The New Republic is over, the Resistance is the only thing standing in-between the First Order and the entire rest of the galaxy and no matter how fast Poe flies they’re no match for a star system destroying weapon.

“This is war now, Poe. We do what the New Republic should’ve done years ago – we show them we are not afraid,” she looks at him with anger and grief blazing with equal measure in her eyes and he nods, fire burning in his belly.

* * *

They get sent to Takodana with the explicit orders of taking down as much First Order scum as they can. It’s just a group of First Order thugs trying to intimidate Maz and Poe’s met her before, a wonderful person and an amazing host. He doesn’t like the idea of the First Order anywhere near her.

They fly in and it’s so easy Poe almost laughs, they doesn’t see them coming as they surge out from the waterfront, flying in a neat formation over the remains of Maz’s castle. He feels alive as he goes, takes out a cluster of stormtroopers holding what he thinks are a group of captives before he dives around, shooting down nine TIEs in a single run. He whoops into his comms and he can hear the rest of his squadron cheering alongside him.

In that moment it’s easy to forget about everything else apart from flying. His hands don’t shake, his mind doesn’t falter. He’s the same Poe Dameron as he always has been when he’s sitting in the cockpit of Black One, there’s no questioning it. The high lasts all the way back to base and he leaps out of his ship without waiting for a flight tech to put up the ladder, ripping off his helmet with a shit-eating grin.

It was only a little weird flying without BB-8’s constant chatter behind him and this new droid doesn’t know him quite as well, he doesn’t think any other droid ever will. He’s just talking to one of the techs when he hears a familiar trill. The special set of beeps BB-8 had made for his name in binary. He almost feels like he must be hallucinating when he turns and sees the familiar orange and white ball screaming his name and hurtling towards him. He dives down to his knees on the concrete and gapes, “BB-8 you’re alright! You’re here!”

‘ _Friend-Poe!’_ BB-8 screams, slamming itself so hard against Poe’s knees that it almost rolls right onto his lap, _‘BB-8 has returned to Friend-Poe. BB-8 has missed Friend-Poe. BB-8 has found new friends, designation: Hero-Rey and designation: Jacket Thief-Finn. Hero-Rey and Jacket Thief-Finn have helped BB-8 to complete Friend-Poe’s mission to bring the map to Skywalker back to the Resistance.’_

“Huh?” he stops rubbing the top of BB-8’s metal head for a second and glances up, seeing an all too familiar figure running towards him on the landing strip.

“Oh, buddy,” he laughs disbelievingly, staggering to his feet and running at the same time as Finn shouts, “Poe Dameron, you’re alive?”

They slam into each other’s arms and Poe can’t goddamn believe this. Finn, _his_ Finn, his hero, Finn is still alive and in his arms right now. He wants to kiss him so bad, but he holds himself back because what kinda introduction to the Resistance is that? Having a pilot you’ve known for all of ten minutes run up to you and kiss you in-front of everyone? He satisfies himself with holding on tightly to his arms even when they break apart.

“Is that my jacket?” he asks and all of a sudden BB-8’s designation for Finn makes a whole lot of sense, he almost wants to kick the droid for being so cheeky. Finn starts trying to take it off, but Poe grabs his shoulder before he can, “no, no, keep it,” he grins, biting his lip, “it suits you.”

And maybe Poe’s selfish for doing that, for liking what Finn looks like in his jacket, how it stretches at his shoulders and is tight around his arms in a way it never was on Poe. It’s selfish and maybe a little creepy as well, but sue him, he’s pretty sure he’s gone through hell on earth in the past couple of weeks, he deserves a little selfish now and then. It’s not like Finn will know either, he’ll probably think Poe’s being nice instead of a weird old man and even worse he’s alright with that too.

“I need to talk to General Organa,” Finn suddenly says, gripping Poe’s hand tightly, “I have information about Starkiller base.”

“Starkiller?” Poe repeats in shock, eyes widening, “Finn, buddy – come on, run – there’s no time to lose.”

He holds Finn’s hand throughout the meeting, grip tight and reassuring. They have hope, they have a single fleeting hope and Poe clings onto it with all his strength. He won’t let go of that even though he knows the odds, he knows just how likely it is that they succeed, even less so that they come back alive, but he can’t let his pilots see the doubt on his face.

“We’re going to do this, alright?” he says down the comm just as they finish all of their pre-flight checks, “for the Resistance, for the New Republic, for everything we know and love.”

He gets a chorus of determined ‘ _yes Commander Dameron_ ’s back and they take off. He takes one long lingering look at D’Qar before he jumps into hyperspeed and he doesn’t look back.

* * *

The attack on Starkiller base is a success, even though it doesn’t really feel that way to Poe, nothing where he loses half his pilots could ever really be a success. The hangar is too big and empty when they land even with everyone crowding around them and cheering, there’s five gaps in the formation that he can’t look away from. They won, the rest of the galaxy is safe at least for now, but there are people who flew under his command that will never see peace and he tries his best to smile even though his chest aches with loss.

He’s in the middle of a thronging crowd of celebrating people when he sees the Falcon land and instead of Finn running out and into Poe’s arms there are medics who rush in. He comes out lying too still on a stretcher and the whatever was left of a smile drops off his face.

“What happened? Hey – what happened?” he runs towards them, yanking off his helmet with BB-8 squealing behind him. He grabs a girl by the shoulder and she flinches violently, spinning around and looking like she’s ready to kick his head off.

“Don’t touch me,” she hisses, shoving his hand off and running a few steps to catch up with the stretcher, “who even are you?”

“I’m Poe Dameron,” he says distractedly trying to look over the medics’ shoulders at what the kriff is happening to Finn, “what in the Force happened?”

“Both of you get out of the way,” Kalonia snaps, pushing them both to a halt, “Poe go to debrief and whoever you are stop cluttering the medbay. We need space.”

They get shoved unceremoniously out of the door and it slams shut, leaving them stranded in an empty corridor. BB-8 squeals nervously, rocking back and forth between their feet and looking up at them expectantly.

“You’re Poe,” she says, glancing up from BB-8 and staring at him warily, “Finn’s Poe. BB-8’s owner.”

“And you’re Rey?” he guesses, the girl that Finn wouldn’t stop talking about and he really tries not to think about the implications behind her calling him ‘Finn’s Poe’, “welcome to the Resistance – sorry about the whole,” he waves his hands around to try and say something, but he’s tired and grieving, cut him some slack, “I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that.”

She tenses up even more like she doesn’t trust his apology, but she just nods curtly, “it’s alright. And Finn was stabbed with a lightsabre. By Kylo Ren.”

Poe lets off a long stream of curses that makes even BB-8 trill with shock and Rey’s lips curl into what could be interpreted as a smile. “That bastard,” he hisses, shaking his head, “if I ever see him again, I’ll rip that stupid mask off myself and break his teeth in.”

She smiles now, properly, “his mask is very stupid isn’t it? I broke it though.”

Poe laughs, for the last time in the upcoming few days, “I’m glad to know,” he says before his comm beeps at him to tell him that a lot of people want to know where he is right now, “lemme take you to the Command Centre, you can talk to the General. No point waiting outside here, they’ll be a while. Don’t worry he’s in good hands, I should know, they’ve patched me up enough times.”

She glances back at the door hesitantly, but BB-8 chirps out some reassurances and she nods grimly, following Poe at a careful distance down the corridor.

* * *

It’s a hard few days, Poe is buried under so much paperwork that he barely sleeps, but he has to record the holos for all the pilots he’s lost to send to their families. He does it personally because these were his pilots, they flew under him, died under his command. It’s the least he can do for the people they’ve left behind. It’s a heavy duty, but one that he’s proud to do. He tries not to think about how Snap had to make one of these for his dad just two weeks ago.

He finds himself in the medbay more often than not and to be honest he’s not even sure why he’s here, sitting at the bedside of a man he hardly knows. They’ve only really had two half conversations, both of them hasty and quick, but he hates the idea of Finn waking up alone and surrounded by strangers. At least he’s a familiar face and he doesn’t think about the way his heart flutters just a little bit when he looks at Finn. It’s a little crush nothing more, he thinks as he lifts his head from his holopad.

“What are you doing?” his head snaps around at Rey’s voice and he tries to smile at her as she walks into the medbay. She gives him a small hesitant nod in return.

“I’m writing bereavement holos for the pilots we lost in the attack,” he explains as she sits down on the other side of Finn’s bed and BB-8 rolls over to bump against her shins, “I’ll film them later tonight.”

She blinks at him, confused, but still too wary to ask. He runs a hand through his hair, it’s getting too long again, he realises, but Pallaris was always cut it for him and now he’s dead. He clenches his jaw and sags against the chair. They’re really uncomfortable, maybe he should ask Leia if they can afford to replace them with something comfier. Probably not.

“They’re to send to their families to tell them they’ve passed,” he continues after a while and Rey stares at him curiously, “condolences, explaining what happened but with all the classified bits cut out. I don’t technically have to do this – I could get someone from the command centre to do it for me but – they were flying under command when they died. Their loved ones deserve to hear from their commander officer at least.”

“Oh,” she says quietly, brows furrowing, “you care about people. That’s rare on Jakku, caring about people gets you killed. I think here it means you’re a good person.”

“Thanks, I guess it does,” he says, blinking at her blunt honesty and she grunts in response, turning to look at Finn and he assumes that their conversation is over.

“I’ll be going now, lots of things to do,” she just nods at him and smiles just a little bit, he grins back, “BB-8 you wanna keep Rey company?”

_‘Friend-Poe also needs company. Friend-Poe is going to do a very difficult task and needs BB-8’s assistance. Hero-Rey has Hero-Finn to keep her company,’_ the droid beeps, rushing after him, _‘BB-8 wants to keep Friend-Poe company.’_

“I mean if you insist, buddy,” he shrugs and they go back to his room together.

He’s kinda glad that BB-8 comes with him when he dusts off his official uniform and sits on his chair, back military straight and not a hair out of place. His voice only breaks a few times and he manages to hold back his tears until he finishes the very last one. Then he just curls up on his bed, not caring if his uniform gets crumpled and he sobs, BB-8 playing a quiet song from Yavin until he manages to fall asleep.

Poe stays in the medbay a lot for the next week, flitting from there to the hangar and back in some sort of demented migration. Leia keeps him close to base, she knows that he wants to be here when Finn wakes up and anyways, they need a lot of new recruits to replace all the people they lost. It helps that he’s always loved teaching, but the Resistance can’t afford keep their best pilot locked in atmo, training a bunch of baby pilots how to fly into battle.

Destroying Starkiller may have been a big blow to the First Order, but the Republic lies in ashes around them. He still can’t even comprehend it, Hosnian Prime with the Academy spires reaching so far up into the sky and city stretching further than anyone could see, all gone in a matter of minutes. His home for almost ten years of his life, atomised.

It’s hard on the Resistance, most of their allies are dead or in ruins, scattering into deep space and away from the fight, but there’s a surge of new recruits, angry and ready to avenge the people they love. They look at Poe with blazing determination in their eyes, most of them shuttle pilots and hobbyists now starting to fly with military precision and he’s proud to be the one leading them.

Still he can’t afford to stay attached to D’Qar, not when there’s recon to do, supply runs to finish and fights to dive into. There’s no pretence of peace anymore, every time they see TIEs it’s a bloody dogfight, ones that leave Poe aching and tired. This is war, real and burning and exhausting and sometimes he wants to collapse in his bed and try to forget the whole thing, but he can’t. Giving up was never really an option, especially not now. He flies, he comes back, he films more bereavement holos than he thinks his heart can really bear and he flies out again.

Between missions Poe begins notices that Rey only talks to him, BB-8 and Chewbacca, maybe sometimes Leia but only if she’s summoned into the command centre. She just spends all her time running around the forest and then sitting silently beside Finn in the medbay. He mentions to Jess in the mess hall before he goes, asking if she could keep Rey company once in a while.

“You want me to babysit your weird Jedi scavenger?” she snorts, glancing over to where Rey is sitting by herself in the corner, shovelling food into her mouth like they’re starving her.

“I mean not babysit her, but you’re on base for the next week coordinating that big mission with Bastian. Maybe you could try getting to know her,” he tries to keep an innocent face on, but she just glares at him.

They’re kinda similar, Rey and Jess, in a weird semi-feral way. They’re both blunt, can go from relaxed to pushing your face down into the dirt in five seconds and Poe thinks that they’re either going to get on like wildfire or tear each other’s throats out. It’s a gamble he’s willing to make.

“What’s in it for me?” she says and Poe grins because when she starts talking like this it means she’s already going to agree to do it, but he plays along anyways.

“I mean I’m not sure if you noticed, but,” he glances over his shoulder and where Rey is hunched over her food like she thinks someone is going to steal it from her, “she’s kinda cute.”

Jess just snorts, but she still starts looking in that calculating way she always does when she’s trying to assess how attractive someone is and additionally if she can beat them in a fight. That’s very important for her apparently, Poe doesn’t understand, and he doesn’t pretend to either.

“I know your gay ass isn’t looking, Poe,” she says eventually, just a little begrudgingly because Poe is so right, she’s so Jess’ type it’s not even funny.

He continues like she hadn’t even said anything, ticking his next finger off, “she’s been trying to indirectly ask me about a sparring partner and you always say that the pilots are – what’s the phrase you use? ‘Weak ass sons of banthas who can’t do jackshit without a ship’?”

She grunts again in acknowledgement of what he’s saying, eyes following Rey as she leans back against the wall and starts quietly watching the rest of the mess hall. She looks away before Rey can notice her staring.

“And also, you owe me for bailing you out a couple months ago from that fight in that cantina I ‘forgot’ to put in my mission report,” he says flatly, and she hisses at him like an angry tooka.

“They were a First Order sympathiser _and_ a slave trafficker – they deserved everything that they got coming,” she growls and Poe just shrugs.

“I didn’t say they didn’t deserve it, but you know the general would’ve grounded you for it anyways,” he just holds his hand out and she grabs it, squeezing so hard he has to struggle not to wince.

“I’ll do it you piece of bantha shit,” she grumbles as Poe stands up to go get ready for his mission. “I hate you,” she shouts after him so loudly that people (including Rey) turn around to stare at them, “fly steady, you complete nerf herder.”

He gives her a mocking salute as walks out of the room and he can see Rey’s eyes flicker between them, steady and intense.

* * *

It’s a hard mission and a tiring one as well. Him and Yolo have to sleep in shifts and during hyperspeed jumps only, he thinks he might have gotten just about twenty-five hours of sleep in the last five days and that’s not enough even for him. He’s just about done crashing off his last stim when they land, it’s not the prettiest landing in the world, but sue him, okay?

He drifts into the command centre for his debrief and just about manages to coherently string everything together, Leia just waves him off and tells him to get some sleep. He grins tiredly as he salutes, slouching off to a nice hot shower and a comfy bed to pass out for as long as he can manage. He plans on just popping in to the medbay to say hi to Finn to make sure he knows Poe’s come back safe, but it doesn’t exactly work out like that.

Someone grabs him as soon as he gets steps beyond the curtain around Finn’s bed, gripping the collar of his flightsuit and slamming their entire bodyweight onto him. Normally he might have been able to fight back at least a little, but his brain is still a tired pile of mush and his legs just noodle underneath him.

They go tumbling backwards with a crash. BB-8 screams, taser out and Poe tries very weakly to throw his assailant off. His eyes go wide when he sees Rey’s face pressed close to his, but panic starts rearing its ugly head in his chest when his head hits the table and he can’t get his hands free. All of a sudden, he’s not in the Resistance medbay anymore, he’s being captured and beaten by stormtroopers. His breath can’t make its way out of his lungs anymore, his eyes blur, everything falls out beneath him.

He can vaguely hear the sound of shouting, Kalonia maybe, the weight on his chest is lifted off, but he still can’t breathe. All he can do is curl in a ball, gasping, shaking. All he can see is the blank walls of the interrogation chamber, the looming figure of Kylo Ren crushing his mind inside his skull. He can’t breathe. He doesn’t know where he is, what’s going on.

“Poe, Poe, calm down – you’re in the medbay, you’re safe,” Jess’ voice comes out of nowhere and he curls even deeper into himself, “breathe with me, Poe. In for seven, out for eleven. Can you do that for me? Can you breathe with me?”

He nods blindly, trying his best to follow until the fog over his mind clears and he blinks at her slowly. He’s sitting hunched in the corner, leaning against the side of a bed with Jess crouched next to him, looking like she must have run from the hangar directly here. He hates that she knows exactly how to talk him down from a panic attack now, but he’s grateful, nonetheless.

“I’m alright now,” he says and he’s so tired, whatever remaining energy he had is gone now, he feels like he might pass out on the spot, “thanks, Jess.”

“It’s no problem, Poe,” she says when she helps him to his feet and he winces slightly, rubbing the back of his head. She’s already turning, bristling at where Kalonia and Rey are standing, watching them with concern and wariness respectively, “why did you attack him? That’s not what we do here,” she snarls and Poe doesn’t have the energy to tell her to stop, just sitting down heavily on the bed.

“I didn’t know that he would – that he’d react like that,” Rey replies, hunching her shoulders like she’s scared Jess might leap at her, “I was just – I wanted to know why he sent you to spy on me.”

“ _Spy_?” Jess spits out incredulously and Poe can’t help but smile tiredly.

“I didn’t ask her to spy on you, Rey. I just thought it would be nice for you to have some company when me and BB are out,” he explains and her gaze snaps to him.

She blinks in confusion. “What do you mean? I’m fine by myself,” she says warily.

“Force,” he mutters, brain not running fast enough to try explain the idea that he thought she might have been lonely, “I know you are – you’re just fine on your own, but Pava likes sparring and I thought you two might get along. Would be nice to have a friend or two in the Resistance, right?”

“Oh,” she says quietly, dropping her defensive stance and BB-8 takes the opportunity to whirl past her to scan Poe up and down for any injuries, beeping angrily as it goes, “oh. I didn’t realise. Sorry, Poe.”

“That’s all you have to say?” Jess snarls again, still standing defensively between them, “you attack him out of nowhere and all you can say is ‘I didn’t realise’ you–”

“Jess just drop it,” he sighs, touching her on the shoulder, “it was an accident, she apologised and she’s not going to do it again,” he gives Rey a pointed look and she nods rapidly, “also I’ve been awake for the last thirty hours and I just had a panic attack – I’m about to pass out on my feet.”

“Let’s go then,” Jess says, marching the two of them out and makes sure Poe doesn’t fall asleep in the shower. He smiles at her in thanks when she makes sure he’s not going to brain himself and she presses a kiss to his forehead before she goes.

He wakes up after twelve hours of probably the best sleep he’s gotten since he was sent out to find Lor San Tekka, something about the mix between an insanely tiring mission and a panic attack that practically shut his brain down as soon as he lay down. He leaves to go to the mess hall in a happy daze, but as soon as he steps out of the room he nearly trips and slams his head into the wall opposite.

There’s a rock just outside his door, one that’s smooth and grey and fits almost perfectly in his palm, like the kind you’d find at the bottom of fast running streams back on Yavin. He smiles to himself, glancing up and down the corridor to see if anyone’s there, but he knows an apology when he sees one.

“Thanks for the rock, buddy,” he tells Rey when he catches her outside the training hall in the afternoon and she nods brusquely at him, her lips pulled down into just the edge of a frown.

“I’m going to leave to find Skywalker soon,” she says, “I leave tomorrow morning. Will you tell Jess I’m sorry? And that I hope we can still be – uh, be friends?”

“Why don’t you tell her yourself?” he asks softly and her eyes flicker rapidly between him, the ground and the treeline in the distance.

“I’ll try that,” she says uncertainly and walks away with a small nervous wave like she’s still not too sure about how to say goodbye properly and he waves back, big and enthusiastic.

“You know Rey talked to me yesterday – you probably had something to do with that you meddling bastard,” Jess says to Poe when they’re both in the hangar, doing some routine repairs on their X-Wings. Poe had gone to see Rey off in the early morning and she’d slapped him on the back so hard it almost winded him as a goodbye.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he gives her his best innocent look, sticking his head out of a control panel to pout at her and she throws a rag at him with a snort, “what did you two even talk about anyways?”

“She said she liked me, I said I liked her back as much as you can when you’ve only known each other for a week,” she shrugs, “but she’s gone on her top-secret mission, might not be back for months, even years and I’m a starfighter pilot – you know we don’t exactly have the longest life expectancy. We might all be dead by the time she comes back.”

Poe knows more than most other people, he’s had more than his fair share of brushes with death, but no one becomes a starfighter pilot and expects to live a long and uneventful life. Especially not a pilot in the Resistance, especially not Poe Dameron.

“So that’s it then?” he pushes just a little bit and she sighs, throwing her spanner back into her toolbox and slumping down on s-foil with a sigh.

“We agreed that if she comes back then we’ll try it out – if we’re both still alive and interested, but I made it clear that I’m not gonna be here waiting and pining after her,” she shrugs, “I’m not a romantic like you, life moves too fast to fall in love with someone you barely know.”

“That felt a little pointed,” he snorts, rubbing his chest with mock hurt and she grins at him lazily.

“You’ll ask him out though, right? You’ve only been pining over the guy for weeks now,” and Poe just sighs, rubbing his dirty hands on Jess’ rag and screws the panel shut.

“I mean I can’t exactly do it when he’s not awake yet, can I?” he tries to joke, but she sees right through him with a single mocking look.

“Just remember – the war doesn’t wait, take your opportunity or lose it, _buddy_ ,” she hops off the s-foil and leaves him in the hangar to think about it all.

* * *

Of course, Finn wakes up when Poe’s on a mission, of kriffing course that happens. It’s just a two-day supply run to secure a shipment of fuel, but as soon as he climbs out of his X-Wing the flight tech grins at him and yells that ‘his stormtrooper is awake’.

He very nearly throws his helmet onto the landing strip and runs straight to the medbay, but instead he turns to Bastian with big pleading eyes. He just pushes him towards the medbay with a roll of his eyes, telling him he’ll deal with the debrief. Then Poe runs, BB-8 trilling loudly behind him.

“Finn,” he shouts as soon as he gets in there, practically skipping over to his bed and grinning so big and wide his cheeks ache a little, “you’re awake I can’t believe it. How’re you feeling, buddy?”

Finn blinks up at him a little confused for a second before he starts smiling as well, Poe can feel his stomach melt all the way down into his shoes. “Where’s Rey? Was Starkiller destroyed?”

He can’t help but falter a little bit at the mention of her name. He hides it well though, rushing towards him and putting a gentle hand on Finn’s shoulder to stop him from straining too much.

“She’s gone to look for Luke Skywalker with the map. She’s safe, don’t worry, she’s got Chewbacca and the Falcon,” he slides his hand down to clasp Finn’s, “and Starkiller was a success, thanks to you, Finn.”

“Oh, oh,” he stops for a second and Poe almost stops breathing he’s so goddamn beautiful, “that’s amazing,” he says after a while, almost like he’s in a daze, “and you’re alright too. Everyone’s okay.”

“Yeah, buddy. I’m alright, everyone’s alright,” he grins and squeezes their hands together tightly, Finn turning his head and smiling back at him.

It makes Poe ache just a little bit to have Finn smile at him like that and not be able to kiss him, but he holds back for now. It’s not the right time, he tells himself, he barely even knows him yet and Finn has never properly experienced the world outside of the First Order. When Finn finds his feet and gets to know more people and figure out what he likes then he’ll see. Not right now, but someday. 

Poe thinks that in another universe, if the First Order hadn’t gotten to Finn first then he would’ve been a professor or an academic or scientist or anything like that because there’s no one in the whole galaxy who loves learning as much as he does. Everything, he always wants to know everything about everything. No matter how many holobooks Poe brings and journals he downloads onto Finn’s new holopad, the next time he comes back he’s already finished them.

“I’m gonna run out of things to give you, buddy,” Poe laughs when he pops back in after a short mission and Finn is _already_ done with the stack of readings he’d left him, “if we were back in the Academy you’d be the star student.”

Finn just grins, a little embarrassed. Some days he tries to wave off Poe’s praise like he doesn’t deserve it, but now he’s getting more used to it. He deserves it, deserves much more than that. He’s smarter than a lot of people in the galaxy, a lot of the people who are up on top making all the decisions, Poe thinks privately.

“There’s not much else to do when I’m just stuck in here,” he shrugs, and Poe’s eyes light up with an idea and he tosses Finn the sweetapple he’d grabbed from the mess hall with a grin. He comes back in five minutes with a hoverchair and BB-8 whirring around him like crazy.

“You can’t walk for very long yet so,” he waves his hands at the chair, “I could take you around base, so you don’t get cockpit fever stuck in here.”

It’s actually pretty easy for Finn to ease himself into the chair, he can walk now for around ten metres before his legs start turning to jelly and his back cramps up, so he manages to limp from his bed into the chair without any help. He twists as best he can and grins up at Poe who just grins right back at him like a lunatic.

“Commander in the Resistance doesn’t have anything better to do?” Finn asks, voice teasing, but Poe can hear the edge of uncertainty in it as he pushes the chair out of the medbay.

“Damn Finn, I just got back from a mission and you want to send me back out there,” he sighs dramatically with a hand pressed to his chest, “nah, if I wasn’t with you I’d probably just be bothering Pava or something – maybe taking a nap – nothing useful anyways.”

“Alright then,” he says, distractedly. His eyes are wide and staring around him as they walk out into the main courtyard, “there’s so many colours, so much happening,” he mumbles half to himself. Poe leans against the chair and points at whatever Finn is staring at and starts explaining.

So, whenever he has a spare hour or two on-planet he steals a hoverchair from the medbay and takes Finn all around the base and even a little bit into the jungle around it. He never stops talking, pointing at everything and asking what it is, how it works, what it does. Finn’s happiness is infectious, Poe thinks he hasn’t smiled so much in months. It’s easy to spend time with him, the hours seem to drip away smooth and sweet like honey onto Poe’s tongue and he savours them.

Still, there’s a war to win and he spends more and more of his time in his X-Wing, flying ever more dangerous missions and returning even more tired. He falls asleep a few times sprawled over Finn’s bed, slumped over halfway through telling a story. He doesn’t have nightmares there and maybe it’s because he never sleeps for long enough but it’s nice to wake up with Finn’s hands softly carding through his hair and a spare blanket around his shoulders. Poe always blinks up at him blearily, smiling softly and wishing he could reach up and kiss him.

Perhaps falling asleep at random times is a sign that he doesn’t ever get enough sleep at night, or rather it’s pretty obviously that it is but he goes on all of his missions anyways. It’s too much sometimes to fall asleep knowing that he’ll wake up screaming in a couple of hours anyways. The guilt of waking up his friends weighs heavy on him as well so on bad days he tries to force himself to stay awake. He knows it’s not healthy and the tiredness weighing down his bones makes him just a little more trigger-happy than before, but what else is he supposed to do?

Plus, there’s something about the blood he can taste in his mouth even after the exhilaration fades that makes him feel alive even when he comes back. His hands don’t shake, his mind is clear, Poe is alive, alive, alive, the way he can’t be outside of an X-Wing anymore.

Someone has to notice, maybe he’s trying to get them to because Snap, Jess and Bastian give him sneaky worried looks when they think he can’t see, he just ducks his head and walks away. Someone has to figure it out eventually that Poe is a fraud, a weakness, the only thing he can do right is fly like no one else can. He’s counting down the days until someone tells him that’s no longer enough.

“Dameron, what is going on?”” Leia asks him firmly one day, finding him sitting on an empty patch of grass staring into the dark forest. There’s something that’s the closest thing to a party the Resistance can afford to get raging on in the pilots’ common room, but it had gotten too stuffy and full, he almost felt like he was suffocating.

“Nothing,” he says far too quickly, and she gives him a very pointed look when she settles down next to him on the ground, “it was just too hot in there – that’s all.”

“I wasn’t talking about the party and you know it,” she raises an eyebrow when he ducks his head down defensively, “your pilots have been worried about you, you know? You haven’t been sleeping well, you’re taking too many unnecessary risks on missions. This isn’t like you, Poe.”

His chest squeezes tight because this is the day he’s been waiting for, the day he finally gets grounded, gets told he’s too fragile to fly and then what will Poe do? Who will Poe be? He doesn’t know anymore even though he used to be so sure, so confident, but now outside of an X-Wing cockpit he feels lost. 

“I’ve always been just a hot-headed flyboy,” he tries to joke because being able to make fun of yourself is a sign of being okay, right? Leia doesn’t seem to think so, her gaze flickering with concern and something else that Poe misses in the twilight.

“You’ve always been much, much more than that, Poe,” she says, placing a warm hand on his, “there’s other pilots out there that can fly almost as good as you, other pilots that can basically do the same things as you, but they’re not the best pilot in the Resistance, are they? You’re something else, something unique or otherwise I wouldn’t have trusted you to find Lor San Tekka.”

“But I failed,” and he’s surprised at how harsh his voice comes out, how raw and broken he sounds when he speaks, “I failed my mission, I failed the Resistance, I let Kylo Ren know where the map was and the Resistance was almost destroyed because of me, because I was too weak to stop him.”

“Poe if you think that’s failure then Force knows what I am,” she laughs almost incredulously, “Force knows what everyone else is. It was one mission, Poe, and you were tortured, not just tortured but what Ben – what Kylo Ren did to you – no sentient should ever have to go through that.”

He doesn’t speak again for a long while but when he does his voice is small, “I didn’t break,” he says, “he took it from me, from inside my head, but I didn’t break.”

“Oh Poe I would’ve rather you did and didn’t have to face so much more pain,” she whispers and he looks at her wide-eyed with shock, “I know you don’t believe me, but perhaps – perhaps I could show you?”

He looks at her, skittish even before it clicks in his head and he tries not to flinch away with the thought, “the Force?” The fear is palpable in his voice. He clenches his hands to try stop them from trembling and she squeezes back reassuringly.

“Only if you want to. I won’t see anything you don’t want me to see, won’t go snooping around, all I’ll do is show you just how much you mean to me,” she says and he nods, fear still pumping through his blood. He trusts her, much more than he trusts most other people. Leia won’t hurt him, he knows that.

This time is different, she doesn’t come marching into his mind, smashing through the paper-thin walls he’s managed to build. Instead she waits outside, he can feel her gentle touch and he knows she could break through if she wanted, but she waits for Poe to open the door and let her in. It doesn’t hurt, that shocks him so much he stills. All he can feel is the overwhelming love that Leia brings with her.

She passes something to him, something warm and golden and when he touches it memories explode out. A vision of his mother holding her baby bump with the fondest look in her eyes, talking about how she can’t wait to see her baby grow up in peacetime. Kes holding a squirming Poe’s hand still wearing their funeral suits, with a patient smile even though grief is etched into his face. Leia meeting Poe in the Republic Navy for the first time with his freshly buzzed hair and a passion when he speaks that she hasn’t seen for years, fondness creeping up her veins already.

Poe looking defeated in that room on Mirrin Prime, the protectiveness rising in Leia’s chest. Poe falling into place in the Resistance, laughing, joking, growing his hair out again. Leia watching from the side, making sure he gets back alright, goes to the medbay when he needs to, seeing him become ever braver and more golden.

The wave of grief hits him when they get news of the First Order attack on Jakku. He feels how Leia’s knees almost buckle when someone tells him that Poe Dameron has been captured and is presumed dead, but she stands because she is a general, she cannot have favourites, she cannot mourn for a son that is not her son. Her hands don’t shake when she commands her people, but when the doors to her room closes she falls to the ground because even though she’s lost a child before it doesn’t hurt any less the second time.

The relief when they finally get Poe’s transmission from Yavin 4 and this time she has to sit down. It feels far too much like a voice talking from beyond the grave, but Poe Dameron is still alive. Her favourite pilot, her not-child, she doesn’t ever want to see him fighting for this war again because this was never supposed to be his fight, her generation was supposed to have ended this all, but the war still wages on and she needs him, the Resistance needs him.

The horror, the disgust, the guilt when Poe comes back and gives her his debrief, tired beyond his years and never daring to look her in the eye. Her son, her actual son, Ben Solo, who did things that should never have been done to Poe, to anyone let alone someone she loves so dearly. She sees his hands trembling by his sides and the one thought that echoes around her head is ‘I wish you had given up, I wish you had told them so they wouldn’t have hurt you anymore, I wish I could keep you safe.’

She watches him leave, watches him come back with the same weary resignation that she cannot do that, she cannot keep the people she loves safe. People come to her with low worried voices about how they see Poe wandering around at night, looking like he sees ghosts just beyond the light and she worries. He is not broken, that she knows, but he is also not letting himself heal, holding the hurt tight to his chest. She worries, she worries, and she cannot keep her children safe.

Poe gasps when it ends. His cheeks are wet and his lungs strain for air like he’s been holding his breath the entire time. He’s never felt so loved, never really felt all the love someone else held for him. She rubs his back gently as he slowly manages to collect himself again.

“Do you understand now, Poe?” she says quietly once he’s calmed down enough to think, “you’re much more than just a pilot, you’ve never been just that – not to me, not to your father, not to any of your friends and certainly not to Finn.”

“I think – I think I understand now,” he says, voice raw and wet. His hands still shake, but he doesn’t mind as much right now. They might always shake; it doesn’t make him any less than anyone else.

“That was only a tiny fragment, Poe,” she pats his back as she stands again, “I could stay here for centuries and we’d still never get through it all. There’s so much more love in the galaxy than anything else, remember that.”

The nightmares don’t come that night, don’t come for a few nights afterwards as he basks in the glow of the memories Leia had given him and they come back (they always do), but he feels a little stronger, nevertheless. Poe has been hurt, he’s been hurt in ways that are almost unimaginable, but he’s still here, still standing, still has friends and family who love him no matter what. It’s alright, he’ll be alright eventually.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all im gonna say is the first step to recovery is to allow urself to start recovering. recovery is not linear and its fucking hard but we're all gonna get there eventually! so stop reading sad fanfiction and go to therapy u clowns (this is a call out post to my 16yo self)


	5. gather the fuel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are starting to fit together right again and Poe thinks he may just be falling in love.
> 
> or 
> 
> Poe finally stops pining (even though he does that very well)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okaaay icb its finally almost over aaah. this is a short and sweet chapter and is (fun fact) the only chapter where poe doesn't get hurt, traumatised or fucked up in anyway whatsoever! just some pining and emotional honesty when poe finally gets his shit together. also nightmares bc he's just started recovering and honestly I hate fics where he just like *poof* magically better bc thats not how mental illness works! also I'm sad bc theres still no iolo and honestly I miss him but I promise one day I'm gonna write an entire fic of just iolo and poe chilling together on a beach being gay bros. anyways enjoy the finnpoe chapter!

“Doctor Kalonia said they’re gonna release me tomorrow,” Finn says excitedly when Poe visits next and he almost jumps on him in his excitement.

“Buddy, that’s amazing,” he settles for squeezing Finn’s hands instead, “I’ll ask the general for a day off – Force knows I deserve one by now – I can help you get set up with everything.”

“You don’t have to if you’re busy,” Finn tries to insist, but he’s smiling in that way that makes Poe want to swoon. He would pluck one of D’Qar’s moons out of the sky if Finn just asked him sweetly and smiled like that.

“Wait, damn – I’ve got a surprise for you,” Poe grins, ducking out of the medbay to run back to his room where the jacket has been sitting for the last two days. There’s a messy line of stiches on the back that are Poe’s handiwork. He’d begged Snap to help teach him and it had taken a decent amount of whining (and wine) to get him to agree, but Finn doesn’t need to know that.

“My jacket,” Finn shouts, almost leaping out of bed when Poe walk back in with a smug smile, “I mean your jacket – anyways you fixed it.”

“Definitely your jacket, buddy,” Poe drapes it over his shoulders, smoothing out the creases with the palms of his hands, “I told you already, it suits you.”

Finn grins so bright Poe thinks he might be getting dizzy just looking at him and he jerks his hands back from where they’d settled on his chest, trying to will his brain back to full function. He just drops back down onto his chair with a lazy grin and starts talking about the crazy things that happened on his last mission.

* * *

Finn gets allocated one of the rooms in the pilots’ dorms maybe because Poe had a quick word with the Quartermaster the night before and they owed him a favour anyways. They’d grinned at him slyly over the table when he’d requested it and in a mock whisper asked him if he was finally calling in that favour for ‘his stormtrooper’.

He hates and loves when people call Finn that because he isn’t Poe’s, he’s his own man with his own name and his own agency. Poe doesn’t own him just because they helped each other escape, but he still likes the idea that Finn _could_ be his in a different way. It’s possessive and a touch weird, but if that doesn’t sum up Poe in four words, he doesn’t really know what does.

Poe makes it his new mission to make sure Finn is fully integrated into the Resistance. He introduces Finn to all of his friends, mostly pilots because even though Poe has always been friendly, he still keeps a relatively small circle of friends. He’s just a touch nervous about Finn meeting all them, a little bit because he wants to keep Finn to himself and mostly because he knows how overwhelming meeting a whole group new people can be. His friends are quiet for pilots, but rowdy for everyone else and Poe forgets that sometimes.

It’s alright though because turns out Finn loves people, talking to them, finding out their stories, helping out wherever he can. He seems to get on well with everybody, especially Jess, which Poe thinks will bring trouble for himself later because anyone being friends with Jess will always somehow lead to trouble for Poe.

Finn gets a little snarkier, learns far too many swearwords that make Jess double over with laughter whenever he slips one into his speech with an innocent grin. Poe has to endure a lot of embarrassing stories about him in the Academy and he thanks the Force that Iolo and Karé aren’t here to tell the worst ones.

Sometimes he watches Finn talking and laughing and joking around and he aches to think about the person he would’ve been without the First Order. He tries not to think about it too often, there’s no point dwelling on impossibilities, the ‘what if’s, otherwise he doesn’t think anyone would get anything done at all. Still, it feels tantalisingly close, so sickly sweet Poe can’t help but sometimes indulge in his overactive imagination.

Finn is always glowing when he’s with people, even if he’s just sitting there and listening, focus falls over his face and he looks at you like you’re the only person in the whole galaxy. Poe thinks he understands more than anything why Finn has become one of the most popular people on base.

Still, Poe is pretty obviously his favourite. Finn waits for him on the edge of the flight strip when he comes back from missions, almost bowling him over as soon as he climbs out of his X-Wing. When Poe is in the hangar, command centre, mess hall, Finn always pops up and links their hands together, telling him about what he got up to when he was away. He likes it, listening to all of Finn’s stories about what’s going on in the base with his complete attention like they’re mission reports.

It’s nice, really really nice, even though the other pilots tease him mercilessly as soon as he sees Finn running towards him it’s suddenly all worth it. He’s always warm and pilots always have cold hands, something about microgravity and the vacuum of space that they were taught back in the Academy and Poe’s long forgotten.

What he does know is that Finn’s hands are always warmer than his and now when Poe comes back from flying, Finn holds them to warm them up almost on instinct. It shouldn’t make his heart flutter, he’s a grizzled soldier not some teenager dreaming about falling in love, but when he looks at their interlinked hands something complicated definitely happens in his chest.

‘Why haven’t you gotten your shit together yet?’ demands Jess and Snap asks, ‘you still haven’t told him?’ and even BB-8 beeps, _‘Friend-Poe’s heart rate is raised when in proximity to Hero-Finn. In order to reduce symptoms Friend-Poe should kiss Hero-Finn.’_ Poe scolds his droid for being so cheeky.

They spend almost every waking moment together but still it takes him a week or two before he notices that Finn isn’t sleeping well. He’s extra quiet sometimes, stares off into the middle distance with his eyes unfocused and he always tries to put off going back to his own room in the evenings, lingering with Poe until he can’t hide his yawns anymore and Poe kindly kicks him out.

“How are you finding your room, Finn?” he asks him quietly when Finn is leaning onto Poe and trying his best to stifle another yawn as they walk back from the mess hall together, “sleeping alright?”

He tenses a little, Poe remembers that he still doesn’t quite know when it’s alright to ask for help, the eternal fear of there being consequences for being too weak. There’s no point in him telling him it’ll be alright, but he squeezes his hand gently as a reminder that Poe won’t let anything bad happen to him. Not here in the Resistance, not anywhere if Poe can help it.

“I’m–” Finn hesitates, taking a deep breath to collect himself, “I’m not really used to sleeping by myself yet.”

“Oh buddy, I can ask them to transfer you to a group room if you want?” he asks, turning to look at him and always eager to do anything to help.

“Actually, would it be alright if–” Finn tenses again, breathes, relaxes. Poe’s chest seizes with happiness when he recognises the techniques their resident therapist must have taught him to help him ground himself, calm himself down, “if I could sleep with you? In your room – I mean – it’s just that you’re the only person I would trust – trust enough to fall asleep next to.”

Poe blinks at him silently, brain trying to process what Finn’s asking and his voice comes out more hesitant than he wants it to, “buddy it’s just that I–”

“It’s fine if you don’t want to – I just – forget about it. I’ll get used to it eventually,” he says, flustered and retracting into himself a little bit, shuffling to the side so he’s not leaning on Poe’s shoulder anymore. He misses the weight already.

“No, no, it’s not that it’s just that,” Poe exhales sharply and runs a nervous hand through his hair, “I don’t really sleep well. At all. I have bad nightmares so it wouldn’t be a very restful with me unless you like getting smacked in the face and screamed at in the middle of the night.”

“You didn’t have nightmares when you fell asleep in the medbay,” Finn says thoughtfully, thumb tracing an unconscious pattern on the back of Poe’s hand that sends shivers down his spine, “are they about the Finalizer?”

He smiles softly before nodding, “yup. Kylo Ren, he really did a number on me,” he laughs as he taps his temple with his free hand because he doesn’t really know how to explain it, what actually happened to him. Plus, his brain isn’t really fully functioning right now, not with Finn looking at him with that gentle intensity like he’s the most important goddamn person in the whole universe. Poe looks at the ground instead, boots kicking up gravel as they walk.

“Could I try? Staying you for a night?” Finn asks after another long silence, voice quiet and uncertain and kriff, Poe can’t say no to him. Not now, maybe not ever.

“Alright then,” he laughs, shaking his head, “you can try, buddy.”

* * *

Technically Poe’s room is a double, but the perk of being a commander is that he gets it all to himself, so the second bed functions more like a sofa than anything else. It’s covered in schematics and papers and old clothes that Poe hasn’t had time to tidy up these last few weeks. He rubs the back of his neck, a touch embarrassed when they walk in together even though he knows Finn has seen it before. It’s different now that he’s going to sleeping here somehow. He wants to make sure he’s comfortable and Force knows how clean Finn keeps his own room.

“It’s a little messy, sorry about that,” he mutters, grabbing a bundle of stuff and dumping it on the desk, he can hear Finn and BB-8 snickering behind him, “it’s been a busy couple of weeks – haven’t had much free time.”

He doesn’t say ‘and all the free time I have had I’ve spent with you’, but Finn just grins and grabs a schematic off the bed to look at.

“Is this a TIE Fighter?” he asks curiously and Poe slinks around to look at it.

“Yeah, me and Snap have been working on trying to make a full schematic for it, most of it’s just from what I remember flying one, but I wasn’t really concentrating that hard on the controls and stuff because you know,” he waves his hand around vaguely, “trying not to die and all that.”

“Wait this is all from your memory?” Finn blinks at him, amazed, “that ten-minute flight where we were literally seconds from being shot out of the sky the entire time? And you made such a detailed drawing of the controls? Poe Dameron, you’re amazing!”

He tries to splutter out some excuses, something about starfighters all kinda being the same anyways especially if they’re designed for humanoids, but the compliment sends warmth rushing up his cheeks. He ducks his head, embarrassed and smiles warmly, heart fluttering in his chest.

“Well best pilot in the galaxy and all,” he manages to splutter out, “but anyways lemme just get this bed ready and we’ll go to sleep.”

He falls asleep easily as he always has for years and years, and it helps that he can hear someone else’s soft breathing on the other side of the room. It’s almost like he’s back in his Academy dorm with Iolo again, or his room on the Echo of Hope with Jess. It’s like something before all of this, before Poe became a little hollower and a little less human.

The dreams come slowly, burning back like the fog off the lake in the mornings, but instead of revealing cold and clear water it’s the dark First Order interrogation cell. He can’t breathe, he can’t move, he’s just sitting there, Kylo Ren walking towards him with his hand outstretched, digging his fingers into Poe’s mind and all he can do is scream and scream and scream.

He wakes up with warm arms around him and a soft voice in his ear and he nearly flips them both off the bed in his panic. Finn’s murmuring something, soft reassurances, curled around Poe’s tense and sweaty body just like Poe would do when Finn’s back was spasming in pain and there was nothing anyone could do about it. He sags back into the mattress, grounding himself in the feeling of Finn’s breath against his skin.

“I’m sorry,” he manages to croak out when he’s calmed down enough to speak, “I told you it wouldn’t be a restful night,” he tries to joke, smile toying on the edge of his lips that Finn won’t even be able to see in the darkness.

“It’s alright, it woke me up from my nightmare,” Finn murmurs against Poe’s neck and he can’t help but laugh. Two dysfunctional idiots together, it just might work out. He turns to face Finn and presses a small grateful kiss to his lips before he curls into his chest and he falls asleep like that, curled together.

Poe wakes up to BB-8 chirping at him to get up. He’s leading some newly graduated recruits on their first proper mission that leaves in the early morning and should be back by the next day. He groans quietly as he sits up, Finn is already awake as well and looking up at him with an unreadable expression.

“Morning,” he groans again when he clambers over Finn to get up, “not too bad, the nightmares? You handled mine pretty well that’s for sure.”

He rambles on, brain never really working at full capacity until he gets at least one cup of caf in him. He’s used to just talking mindlessly at BB-8 or to be honest sometimes even himself, just about anything, whatever and nothing, honestly half the time it’s barely even coherent, even fourteen years in the military has failed to make him a morning person. He’s halfway through putting his flightsuit on when his stupid brain finally clicks into action and his jaw drops down to the ground.

“I kissed you,” he gasps, eyes bulging out of his head as he stares at Finn who’s making the bed with a military precision Poe’s sheets have never seen, “last night – after you woke me up from my nightmare.”

“You did,” he replies hesitantly, looking at Poe with that confused crease between his eyes like there’s a problem he’s trying to solve, “is that – did you not want to?”

“No, I did I just – I shouldn’t have, you know? I wasn’t even fully awake, and I just did it instinctively,” he rubs his hands through his hair harshly, glancing up to see something flit across Finn’s face. It might be all in his head, but it almost looks like disappointment.

“Oh,” is all he says, eyes not meeting Poe’s as he shrugs on his jacket, Poe’s jacket that was once Shara Bey’s jacket now with a jagged line down the back. Maybe he’s reading this all wrong, but BB-8 beeps at him again to tell him he needs to get going if he wants to get any breakfast before the mission and he steels himself.

“Finn I–” he takes a deep breath, remembers Jess talking about Rey, about how life needs to move fast during war, about how he might not have any time left if he hesitates, “I have to go now, but I don’t leave things unsaid before missions. My job is dangerous, there’s every chance I won’t come back every time and I want you to have someone who can stay safe, who can keep _you_ safe, but kriff I’m a little selfish sometimes. I meant to kiss you, I want to kiss you more, I want to do so many things with you, take you around the whole galaxy and show you everything and you deserve so much more than I can give you.”

He smiles a little sadly at that, glancing away when BB-8 beeps something very insistent and a little bit rude.

“I’ve really got to go, but we’ll talk this through much more fully when I get back, alright?” he says, reaching out to squeeze Finn’s arm when he doesn’t reply before running out of the room.

He likes Finn, he likes Finn a lot, probably more than he’s liked anyone since Muran, but is it love? Does it even need to be? He’s not sure, but he just can’t get a proper read on Finn sometimes, there’s that expressionless face he makes when he’s overwhelmed and he doesn’t quite know how to react. It makes Poe’s gut churn with worry.

Whatever, he shakes his head and runs a final hand through his hair before putting on his best commanding officer smile and walking out onto the flight strip where his baby pilots are waiting. He can eat a ration bar and take a caf pill when they’re in hyperspace, but for now he needs to lead this mission.

He sees Finn watching as they take off and he waves, Finn waves back.

* * *

The mission itself is easy (and how many times has Poe said that in his life), but he wouldn’t take his baby pilots out on something that he wasn’t sure would be smooth flying for their first mission. There’s only a small hiccup on the way back, they’re hit with a sudden solar storm just before they can make their final jump into hyperspace, one of the unpredictable ones that have appeared with the aftershocks of the destruction of the Hosnian system. It cuts their comms and sends two of their mech droids into a temporary shutdown, but BB-8 manages to take control of those ships for the few minutes it takes them to land on the nearest planet to wait for the storm to clear.

It lasts for three days, but they have enough food and water and the moon they land on has breathable atmosphere, so they just camp out in the shrubbery, sleeping in their X-Wings. It should just be like an impromptu camping trip like he used to have on Yavin as a kid. Still, Poe is jittery the entire time, staring nervously at the tumultuous green sky, even though he knows there’s no First Order threat here and the indigenous species are primitive and mostly friendly.

He worries about Finn, about leaving him with most of the conversation unsaid and now dropping out of nowhere for three days. It's not a good feeling to be the one left behind and waiting, Poe knows this from first-hand experience. He’s never been so thankful to get back into hyperspace when the solar storm finally dies down, leaving the sky a peaceful orange and clear for take-off.

“This is Black One back to base,” he says into his comm, crackling a little bit but very much functional now, “we were hit by a solar storm, lost comms, but we waited it out on moon near Bothuwui. Some limited malfunctions, ships will need a full check-up when we get back, but we're okay to fly.”

_“Good to hear Black One_. _We expected that you were help up by the storm,_ ” Kaydel replies and then with a hint of teasing, _“a certain ex-stormtrooper has been tearing up base waiting for you.”_

“With all due respect Lieutenant Connix,” Poe drawls, “shut up.”

She laughs through the comms and he shakes his head before clicking them off and leaning back against his seat.

“What do I do to have friends like that, huh BB?” he asks the droid and he gets something so rude back that he can’t help but burst into laughter. Really, he’s gonna kick Jess’ ass one day for teaching that to his poor droid.

* * *

“Poe,” he hears Finn shout his name as he’s climbing out of his X-Wing and he’s barely down the ladder when he slams into him, almost sending the two of them tumbling onto the ground.

“Hey, buddy,” he grins back, pressing his face into the crook of Finn’s neck and breathing in his soft, clean smell, “I heard you missed me.”

“I did,” he replies, pulling back and Poe only feels a tiny pang of sadness, but his arms are still looped around their waists so it’s mostly alright, “I was worried about you – everyone kept on saying you’d be alright, but I couldn’t be sure and I was just – I’m just glad you’re back.”

“I’m glad I’m back too,” he says softly, running a tentative hand along Finn’s back, “I just need to debrief and then we’ll talk, okay? I’ll be thirty minutes tops. I promise, buddy.”

He takes an hour, but only because he insists on having time to individually praise all of his baby pilots and then go through a suitable plan for them to be fully integrated into the current squadrons. He’s damn proud of them and how they acted, not one of them panicked or flew out of formation even when the solar winds had slammed into them. They’ll all make damn fine pilots that’s for sure.

“You’re a bit of a liar, Poe Dameron,” Finn laughs from where he’s sitting over his holopad at the desk, “thirty minutes tops, right?”

“Shut up,” he grins, tugging off his flightsuit as he walks towards the fresher, “I couldn’t just walk out the debrief, now could I? But I _will_ be quick in the shower and that’s a certified Dameron promise.”

It’s perhaps one of the quickest showers he’s ever had in his life, even Finn looks vaguely impressed when he steps out barely five minutes later, dripping water onto the ground and grinning. He throws on an old shirt and some trousers and drags Finn to his feet.

“C’mon, buddy – let’s talk,” he says and pulls him out of the room to his favourite place on base.

The roof of the hangar overlooks the flight strip and the main courtyard of base, but it’s always quiet and no one comes up here apart from Poe and maybe a few of the other pilots. It’s a good place to think and even better place to talk if you don’t want anyone else to come and disturb you. Poe had been meaning to take Finn up here soon, but they were always too busy in the hangar or in meetings or just doing _something_. He guesses he’s found the time now.

“So, uh – you got any thoughts on what I said?” he says after they’re settled in the corner, Poe leaning against the low wall and Finn sitting cross-legged next to him.

“I have,” he stares straight ahead as he speaks, body still and calm whilst Poe fidgets nervously next to him, “I talked to Jess about it as well and I think I want to be in a relationship with you. Like – like a boyfriend.”

“Oh, Finn that’s – that’s, kriff that’s great,” Poe is laughing, relieved. He’d half thought that Finn was just going to let him down gently, tell him that as much as he liked Poe as a friend and not much else. It would’ve hurt, Poe would’ve thrown himself into a few too many dangerous missions to get his mind off it and then things would’ve gone back to normal. Maybe, probably, Poe doesn’t like to think too far ahead like that.

“But I’ve never been in a relationship, I’ve never kissed anyone before you,” Finn says quietly, doubt flitting across his face, “and Jess told me – I mean you have more experience than me. You could have anyone you want - why would you even want to date someone like me?”

Poe almost laughs disbelievingly, he shifts so they’re closer and cups his head in his hands, “but I want you, Finn - because you’re brave and you’re smart and you’re so sweet and you see all the beauty in things that everyone else has forgotten about. You’re amazing Finn, you should hear what everyone says about you, you’re a hero Finn. You deserve everything in the whole galaxy and more, just because you haven’t dated anyone before, just because I have more experience, it doesn’t mean a thing.”

Finn doesn’t say anything for a while, but then he leans in, hands finding their way to Poe’s shoulders and they kiss, soft and tentative. Poe presses deeper, moving his lips and their bodies shift closer to each other until their chests are already touching and Poe is almost leaning over him. He pulls back after a while, slightly out of breath.

“How was that for a first kiss?” he asks, dipping back in and brushing his lips down Finn’s strong jawline, “first _proper_ kiss,” he amends when Finn opens his mouth again to correct him.

“Really good, anything’s good with you,” he says, and Poe can feel the vibrations of his throat as he speaks, skims his teeth on his skin just to feel Finn shiver.

“Good to know I haven’t lost my touch,” he grins, pulling Finn up so their lips meet again, smiling into the kiss.

They make out until the sun is already down, the big lights in the courtyard flickering on with a low hum and casting a warm orange glow over the base that slowly turns to bright white. When they break apart again their lips are swollen, and Poe is sure there’s a flush high on his cheekbones. He’d stay here forever if he could, but his back aches from days of sleeping in an X-Wing and the awkward position doesn’t really help.

“Force, the wonders of youth,” Poe groans as he flops backwards and Finn even with his still healing back wriggles over to lie next to him without any problems, “if I could be twenty-five again lemme tell you.”

“What were you like when you were twenty-five?” Finn asks, burying his face in Poe’s shoulder and breathing in the smell of his soap, clean shirt, just a hint of the oil he puts in his hair.

“I was stupid,” he grins as Finn rolls his eyes, “cocky, an idiot flyboy, took even more risks than I do now. I was a captain in the Republic and I still believed in it, thought that if I fought hard enough I could change the system,” he shrugs and smiles sadly, “I couldn’t and now – well it’s just atoms.”

“I can’t really imagine you anywhere apart from the Resistance,” Finn says, running a hand through Poe’s hair and he leans into it, pushing his head into Finn’s palm like a tooka, “I can’t really imagine you in a strict military hierarchy, obeying orders, not fighting for what you think is right all the time. What made you defect anyways?”

Poe just freezes, unnaturally especially for someone who seemed to always be moving, talking, laughing. Constant motion in the twitch of his leg, the quick of his lips or nowadays the shaking of his hands, there’s always _something_ about Poe that’s moving, but now he stills. He knew he would tell Finn about Muran at some point, some distant day in the future, but not now, not right after they’d just sorted everything out. Here minutes after the start of a new relationship and let me just talk about the man I thought was the love of my life, the man that I was willing to live for instead of die for. Poe can’t really believe his bad luck.

Poe starts speaking slowly and carefully, fingers finding the ring around his neck, “I’d been working with the Resistance for a little while, just small things, passing on information and things that I’d seen, but there was one incident that I guess triggered it all. It was supposed to be a routine response to a distress call. The First Order was attacking a merchant ship and one of my pilots was killed and–” he takes a small breath, “–his name was Muran. The Republic wouldn’t let me investigate but me, Karé and Iolo did it anyways. When we got back, they told us we’d be court martialled, so we left. It was pretty easy to go at that point, not much holding me there anymore.”

“I’m sorry about that - about Muran,” Finn says, reaching out and tangling their hands together, “were you good friends?”

“He was my–” Poe looks up at the sky, the smattering of stars that look so different here on D’Qar than they did on Hosnian Prime, the planet that doesn’t exist anymore, the sky that only exists Poe's memories, “–my boyfriend. I’d been dating him on and off since I was twenty-one, but I – he was a stickler for the rules, would’ve never left the Republic,” he smiles just thinking about it, about how stubborn and blind Muran could be. “I was going to break up with him before the mission, but I didn’t have the time to tell him. And then he died. It’s why I don’t leave things unsaid before missions – you never know what’s going to happen, no matter how it easy it looks, everything can always go wrong in space.”

Finn just stares at him for a while, Poe tilts his head to look at him from the corner of his eye, squeezing their hands together. He doesn’t know what to say apart from maybe something stupid, so he just keeps his big mouth shut.

“Did you love him?” and Poe flinches a little at the question because Finn really is something else.

He’s like the cold water of the lake on a particularly muggy day, refreshing. He pushes Poe like only Muran used to do, but in a different way, much different. Poe learnt how to let things go for Muran, he learnt to sacrifice things for love because sometimes in the universe you cannot have everything you want. You cannot blaze like an uncontrolled wildfire across the galaxy and have a sweet cottage on a forest moon at the same time, some things are incompatible, some things make you choose. Poe chose Muran for years and then at the end when he’d changed his mind the other option was taken away from him, made his decision feel all the hollower for it.

Finn is different, things are easier with him in some ways and harder in others. There’s a war going on around them and all Poe wants to do is keep him safe, but they’re both soldiers and there’s no safe place in the entire galaxy for people like them. He’s already sitting in tactical meetings and commanding officers have started singing his praises to Poe. It’s not going to be long before he’ll be moving onto bigger, brighter, more dangerous things. He could stay in the command centre, but Poe knows he won’t. There’s something about Finn that burns to be _doing_ rather than just sitting and watching from a distance, it reminds Poe of himself in a weird way. They’re two wildfires, two solar storms, two planets orbiting the same sun. He wonders how long they can burn for, if they can burn together.

“I loved him until the end,” he says eventually, “I still love him in a weird way, but we never would’ve worked,” he huffs out a laugh at the thought of it, “it’s been four years and I’m a different person to who I was when he was still alive. Our futures couldn’t be aligned. Sometimes love isn’t enough, sometimes it is.”

“Oh,” is all Finn says. They just lie there in silence together, something of an understanding passing between them. There are things in both their pasts that they can’t change or hold against each other and it’s alright. They can grow together, heal together. They have the entire future ahead of them after all.

“I’ll tell you more about him some day,” Poe says quietly, linking their hands together when they get up and he can stare over the base where the base is settling into the quiet of the night shift, “after the war ends – after this is all over.”

“I’d like that a lot,” Finn smiles at him, tender, pressing a soft kiss to Poe’s forehead as they make their way back to the dark of Poe's room.

There are a lot of things Poe doesn’t know about the galaxy, about himself, but he knows he would have sacrificed everything for Muran, would have died for him. With Finn it's different – with Finn all he wants to do is live. Maybe that's greedy of him, maybe it's inconsiderate, but Poe just wants to love a little selfishly now, he wants everything with Finn and he isn't willing to give any of it up anymore because giving anything up in a war would mean one of them dying, one of them never making it back to base. So it's okay, he thinks as Finn falls asleep in the same bed as him, breathing slowly evening out and body relaxing into the mattress. Poe deserves to be a little selfish once in a while so he'll just keep on being selfish until he can win this war. 


	6. become the spark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nothing is ever easy for Poe, that's just not the way the Force planned for him, but no matter what he will survive. When he has all of his friends standing behind him he thinks that just maybe he could fly into a hurricane and survive.
> 
> or
> 
> Poe finally begins to live

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahahaha I can't believe this is finally ending...... after (very almost) 50k........ and more than a month of writing...... this is my swan song to poe dameron and holy shit I didn't expect it to ever get this long. this is by far the longest thing I've ever written or completed its literally double the length of the last longest thing I wrote so..... oof this is actually wild. I'm rlly happy w how this turned out and I rlly enjoyed being able to slowly (or not that slowly idk) drive character development that I thought poe rlly needed. so Oscar Isaac ik ur not reading this but this is for u. also iolo is back bc at this point I love that funky little alien boy :D also poe gets hurt again bc I can't help myself.... enjoy!

“Iolo and Karé are due back in the next couple of days,” Snap says when he sits down at mess with them a few days later, “perfectly in time for us to move after that.”

Poe perks up instantly, it’s been a bit over three months since they’ve been gone and so much has happened since then. They’ve only had mission necessary communications with base, they don’t know about Starkiller, Finn and Rey, they don’t know about how Poe is different to how he used to be. He’s missed them fiercely, wishes they didn’t have to go on such long missions, but someone has to do it, and no one is better than the two of them.

“You’ll love them,” he tells Finn when they leave breakfast, Finn going to the command centre to talk tactics and Poe to the hangar to see what was making his steering act up yesterday. He’d nearly crashed straight into a tree when he was landing, and Jess had laughed so hard she’d nearly broken a rib.

He grumbles at her about it in the hangar, trying to fuse some wires together without burning his fingertips like he always does. “The goddamn humidity in this place,” he complains even though he loves it really, but it sends rust creeping into every crevice of their ships no matter how hard they try to stop it. He swears when he burns his fingers and even BB-8 laughs at him from where it’s spinning around Black One’s wheels.

“What did Snap mean by we’re moving? After Iolo and Karé get back?” Finn asks when they’re in their room, Poe pressing him to the bed and kissing his way down his chest, “back in the mess hall.”

It takes Poe’s brain a few minutes to understand what he’s saying and he bites Finn’s stomach just to feel his muscles tense. “Oh, we’re moving base from D’Qar,” he blows against Finn’s spit slicked skin, so he gets goose bumps, “we’ve been here for like three years now – it’s not safe to stay for so long. You’ll find out where soon, it’s classified for now, but I think you’ll like it.” 

“I’ll like it as long as you’re there,” he says fondly, shuddering a little bit when Poe shifts to bite his hip bone and he cards a hand through his hair, tugging fondly, “and there’s good food.”

“Me and food, the two most important things to the Resistance,” Poe teases and muffles his laughter into Finn’s stomach when he nods, eager and honest. This is alright, he thinks when he shoves himself upwards to kiss Finn on the mouth again, they’re alright.

He’s back in the hangar when Jess comes skidding in like she has a ranthar on her tail, his steering is still tilting ever so slightly to the left and he’s started checking the s-foils for dodgy wiring maybe a loose panel, but he still hasn’t found anything.

“Poe, they’re back,” she shouts and he almost topples off the wing in surprise. He throws his tools down, whistling for BB-8 who’s canoodling with another droid in the corner and sprinting outside after her.

There are two X-Wings parked on the flight strip that he hasn’t seen in months and he whoops when he sees Iolo and Karé climbing out. Snap and Bastian are already there, ready to welcome their lovers home and Jess jostles him happily as they watch. They let out a few catcalls when Bastian dips Iolo down to kiss him like they’re in a cheesy holoflick, but they just get two middle fingers in return.

“Poe,” Iolo shouts when he and Bastian finally stop kissing, sprinting over where they are and jumping onto him, clinging on like a koala, “I missed you.”

“I missed you too, buddy,” Poe says, burying his face in Iolo’s shoulder and taking a deep breath. It’s been a long time since he’s seen his best friend, he didn’t think he would ever see him again for a while, but he’s here now.

“Hey, you idiots,” Karé shouts and barrels into them, but Poe is already wobbling from having to carry Iolo and the three of them go toppling down onto the ground with a groan.

“You’re the idiot, Karé,” Iolo groans, “can’t you see me and Poe were having a moment.”

“You gays are disgusting – get a room already,” she hisses, elbowing him and accidentally knees Poe in the stomach as she moves and the three of them collapse again, groaning.

“How in the kriff are they our commanding officers?” Jess sighs to Bastian who’s already walked over and is just watching them struggle, “oh Finn! Come meet Iolo and Karé.”

“I’m Iolo,” he says, springing to his feet and pushing Poe back over when he tries to get up, “Poe’s best friend.”

“And I’m Karé, Poe’s actual best friend,” she interrupts, shoving Iolo out of the way to shake Finn’s hand first.

“Jess is my best friend, I hate both of you,” Poe grumbles when he finally manages to get on his feet and Finn just grins at the two of them.

“I’m Finn, Poe’s boyfriend,” he says cheerily and his eyes go wide when Karé and Iolo whip around to stare at Poe like he’s just sprouted horns. There’s a moment of silence where he starts backing away slowly with his hands up. And then chaos.

They chase him, sprinting their way around the courtyard screaming profanities as Poe desperately tries to get away, ducking under and jumping over whatever obstacles are in his way, but there’s no hope for him. They catch him just before he manages to escape into the command centre, Karé tackling him onto the ground and Iolo grabbing him by arms.

“You got a boyfriend,” Iolo hisses in his ear, “and you didn’t tell us.”

“How could I? You were on no comms,” he wails, trying to wriggle away, “it’s a new thing – only two weeks.”

“Yeah, but you’re a romantic, Poe. Don’t try fool us, you’d only date someone if you were actually really into them – you love pining you disgusting idiot,” Karé jabs him in the back and he almost squeals. The rest of the base carries on walking around them as if nothing’s wrong and when a newbie stops and stares for a second, Kaydel just shakes her head and pulls them along.

“Poe, are you okay?” Jess comes running, worried edge in her voice and he can feel the rising panic in his chest that he hadn’t really noticed in his excitement. Iolo and Karé give her weird looks, but they clamber off him anyways.

“You’re hurt?” Karé asks, scanning him up and down for injuries with a worried expression.

“I’m – not exactly,” he says and sees Iolo catch the way his hands shake when he pulls him to his feet, brows furrowing, “you guys probably have to debrief now – I’ll tell you everything afterwards, I promise.”

“You better,” Karé growls as her and Iolo start walking away towards the command centre, “tell us _everything_.”

“Yes, Captain Kun,” he shouts after her with a mocking salute and he sticks his tongue out when Iolo hollers, ‘and Captain Arana’.

“I like your friends,” Finn says when he jogs up to where Poe is standing, “they care about you a lot.”

“Yeah, they really do,” he replies quietly, pulling him down for a quick kiss.

They find him later, after dinner and he’s hunched up in the corner on the roof of the hangar with a bottle of Correlian brandy and a small smile on his face. They always come here after long missions just to fill each other in on what happened, and everyone knows that Poe tells the best stories. He doesn’t really want to tell this one, but he knows he has to.

“How much do you know now?” he asks, a little surprised by just how small his voice sounds coming out of his mouth. Karé drops down next to him and Iolo flops over his lap so Poe can fiddle with his hair.

“The general told us the basics, about Finn and Rey and Starkiller,” Karé starts, head sinking down onto Poe’s shoulder, “but we want to hear it from you. What happened, Poe?”

So, he opens his mouth and starts talking from the very beginning. Being assigned the mission to find Lor San Tekka to being captured to escaping with Finn and his long journey back home. He tells them about destroying Starkiller with all the losses that came with it and almost losing Finn, but him waking up almost a month later and then falling in love with him. And now? Now Poe is here, feeling a little lost and a little more found and everything has changed from just three months ago.

“I don’t think I’m ever going to be the same again,” he admits quietly at the end of it all, “my hands always shake, and I get panic attacks whenever someone pins me down and I can barely sleep through the night because of my nightmares. Sometimes it feels like I’m not even human anymore – like he took something from inside of me.”

“Poe,” Iolo says desperately, scrambling up and pulling Poe into his arms, “don’t say that – he hasn’t taken anything from you. I’d know, you’re still Poe Dameron, you’re still good and kind and selfless and wonderful. You’re not less _anything_ because of him.”

He wants to say: ‘you promise?’ but how can he ask Iolo to promise something like that? How can he ask him to reassure Poe about something he doesn’t know is true? He just wants to pretend for just a little bit that this is just another night in the Academy and they’re just eighteen and still have the whole galaxy to explore, but he knows it’s not true.

Hosnian Prime is gone, all that’s left of the white buildings of the Academy is an endless molten debris field, every mark they’d ever left there scattered like ashes in the wind. The galaxy will never be the same, no one who ever lived there will be either. Iolo buries his face even deeper into Poe’s shoulder and he relaxes even more into his touch, his familiar smell. Over the decade the three of them have been friends this at least has been the constant: Iolo, Karé and Poe, an inseparable trio. Still together now even though the Force seems to be doing its hardest to pull them apart.

“I think I’m getting better,” he says after a long while, voice thick with unshed tears, “slowly. I’m not gonna be exactly the same, but I’m trying. I’ve got those therapy sessions once a week, friends that love me, a boyfriend, but how am I supposed to get over a war that’s still going on?”

“I don’t know, Poe,” Karé squeezes his hand tight, “but we can all figure it out together, right? Just like we always have.”

He nods and hours later he slinks back to his room where Finn is sleeping, sprawled across the mattress. He tucks himself in quietly, smiling when Finn shuffles aside for him, still asleep and he presses a small kiss to his shoulder. The war is still burning on, might burn on for generations after him, but what’s the point in fighting if you don’t believe you’re going to win? They will win and Poe will be there when they do. Until then he just has to recover, slow and steady.

* * *

“The next couple weeks are going to be hell for you pilots,” is how Leia starts the next meeting and Poe just laughs like the goddamn masochist he is, “we will be moving base from D’Qar to Ajan Kloss in exactly ten days. Now many among you will remember the move from the Echo of Hope to D’Qar, but this is going to a much more complicated manoeuvre. I hope you are all prepared.”

The grin Poe has on his face is half feral when he whoops in support and Finn smiles back at him from where he’s standing just behind Admiral Statura.

The next couple of weeks really are hell. Poe leads the Black Squadron to the furthest reaches of the galaxy to kick up as much of a fuss as possible, that’s not the general’s exact wording, but it’s close enough. They do bombing raids on First Order bases, blow up supply chains and dive in just as they’re rendezvousing with their allies, scary enough to send skittish allies scattering without a fight.

They’re a distraction, a damn good one at that, but they also don’t go planetside for more than a few hours at a time, barely enough for Poe to kiss Finn and fall asleep before he’s back in his X-Wing again. He can’t remember a time when he felt more tired and alive at the same time.

It’s the day of the move when everything goes wrong. Black squadron is in the Fla'Nagan system, almost on the other side of the galaxy from where the Resistance should be right now in the Oetchi system, where the fleet planned to make the first break in their jump before they go on to Ajan Kloss.

_“Come in Black Leader,”_ his comm suddenly crackles to life and he curses as he dives under another TIE just in time for Surlinda to make a direct hit, _“this is Blue One, I repeat, Black Leader please come in.”_

“This is Black Leader,” he replies, his blood turning cold, Snap would only be contacting him if something big went wrong. Red and Blue Squadron were in charge of defending the Resistance fleet if they were found by the First Order, Black Squadron were just a decoy right now, “what’s going on, Snap?”

_“We’re being tailed by the First Order. We’re calling back all squadrons. We’ve rerouted the rest of the fleet, but Red and Blue are stuck in Oetchi, we can handle it, but we need to get wings on the fleet now. Sending – kriff, watch out Yolo – the coordinates to you.”_

“We’re coming now, don’t worry Snap,” he says and opens the comms to the rest of Black Squadron, “we need to go back now, part of the fleet’s been spotted and the rest have been rerouted and are currently defenceless. BB-8 share the coordinates of the ju–” as he’s speaking a TIE jumps out of nowhere and he twists to avoid it, but this ship jerks a little too much to the left and a shot just manages to get through his shields and hit the transparisteel of his cockpit canopy. He curses that stupid steering problem he still hasn’t managed to fix.

“Poe, you alright?” Surlinda asks, “getting ready to jump to the coordinates now.”

“I’m alright,” he says, but there’s cracking noise and a fracture starts growing on the cockpit canopy. He watches as one by one his pilots jump away until there’s just him, Jess, five TIE Fighters and a big crack on his canopy left.

_“C’mon Dameron, let’s go,”_ she says, and he doesn’t quite know how to reply to that. You can’t go into hyperspeed with a crack in your cockpit canopy, especially not one that’s as big as the one Poe’s got right now. He knows that, even the newest cadet knows that.

“I can’t Jess,” and his voice is so much calmer than he feels right now, “I’ve got a crack in my canopy, I won’t make it through the jump.”

_“Poe I can’t leave you here,”_ she answers, diving furiously and Poe banks up to shoot another TIE out of the sky, “ _even if you finish these guys off we’re barely half a parsec away from a First Order base – there’s gonna be backup before we know it.”_

“I’ll be alright – I’ve got to be,” his fingers tighten around the controls, Black One moving like it’s part of his body. This was what he was always made for, flying, “the Resistance needs you. Jump now and that’s an order.”

_“I’m coming back for you,”_ she snarls, angry and determined and he just smiles as he chases down the TIE that was blocking her path and twists in the cockpit so he can watch her go.

“I know you will,” he tries to smile as she disappears and the frantic beeping from the console shows another squadron of TIEs incoming, “brace yourself, BB, it’s gonna be a hard couple of hours.”

Poe fights, fights until he thinks his fingers are going numb, but there’s only so much you can do when there’s only one of you. The bastards don’t really like to give up, each one of them sending themselves to their deaths, but they keep on going anyways. ‘Expendable’ he remembers Finn describing how stormtroopers were treated, how they thought of themselves and it makes him sick to his stomach.

His hands have started to shake again from the effects of the stims he’s taken and he can’t do this forever, there has to be a way out. He glances at the big gas planet they’re near, it’s is in hurricane season and maybe, but just maybe if he can make it into the eye of a storm, he can get to the calm layer he vaguely remembers this planet having. The TIEs won’t be able to follow him down there, not with their weaker engines and light design. He doesn’t think too hard and takes the risk. He dives.

‘ _Friend-Poe is diving into a hurricane,’_ BB-8 screams at him as they go, _‘has Friend-Poe finally malfunctioned? Friend-Poe has taken too many stims.’_

He laughs a little manically and shouts, “I really think I might have.”

He takes a deep breath and prays.

He survives somehow, the wings of Black One barely metres away from the wall of the hurricane and he sees the TIE Fighters stupid enough to follow him get ripped to shreds. The shrapnel spiralling away with the wind so fast that it’s barely a blur of black before it’s gone.

And then, silence. His ears ring with it as his ship finally dips below the hurricane and the horrible screeching roar fades away above him. The layer is barely a klick deep and it’s not exactly easy flying, high winds still buffeting him around. He looks down at his fuel cells with a small gulp, only one and a half left, easily enough for cruising around space for a few hours, but here? With this kinda wind? He gives himself at most another hour and that’s without having to try get out through the hurricane.

He tightens his grip on the joystick, bucking around in his hands and sighs.

“This is really gonna be hard, BB,” he mutters and yanks them upwards again, fighting the wind as he goes. His droid squeaks back at him in agreement and the transparisteel groans ominously.

He stays as long as he dares, after forty-three minutes Poe speaks again. “BB-8 we need to go back up, otherwise we’re not gonna have enough juice to make it.”

They’re both silent as they ascend, barely making it out but Poe almost cries with happiness when space is empty of TIEs. They probably assumed that he died in the planet and couldn’t send anyone down there to check, but his last fuel cell is on 10%, not even enough to get into hyperspace even if he tried.

He methodically flicks through the switches, shutting down his engines, locations, comms, everything apart from his life support and heating. His personal comm’s battery will outlast his ship’s so they can still get in contact with him if they need to, but there’s nothing else he can do now apart from wait.

Eventually when the fuel cell dies his heating will shut down and his life support will follow soon after, he has thirty minutes of essential life support from his flightsuit and after that he dies cold and alone, floating in the vast vacuum of space. This really isn’t how he imagined this mission would go.

“BB-8?” he says after another hour and his droid beeps at him quietly, “can you record something for me? And store it for me if we lose all power?”

_‘Friend-Jess will come back before that happens. Friend-Jess will not break her promise,’_ it squeals at him, almost angrily and Poe snorts.

“I know she won’t, but just in case,” he smiles when the droid very begrudgingly agrees.

“If you’re listening to this then I’m dead,” he starts and it’s so cliché he almost laughs, “I never thought I’d record one of these, always thought I’d go out in a blaze of glory not sitting in an X-Wing that’s shutting down in the middle of empty space and not sure if my friends are even alive or not.”

“Kriff, I’ll try keep this short. Iolo and Karé you’re the best friends I’ve ever had, thank you for everything, I don’t regret a single thing. I wouldn’t be the man I am now without you two, would’ve never even made it a week in the Academy. Snap – where do I even begin? I’ve lived by your words for years, ‘you can do more by living for people than dying for them’. I bet you’ve forgotten you said that to me, I was just nineteen and such a kriffing idiot,” he laughs quietly and tries not to shiver when the heating clicks off, “I don’t think that much has changed.”

“Jess – don’t feel bad, this isn’t your fault. I know you’ll come back for me, I know you tried. Some things we just can’t help, we can’t change, thank you for never giving up one me,” he sighs, smiling even though they won’t be able to see it, “Finn, it’s only been a month since I kissed you for the first time, but I love you. Force, I’m sorry it had to be like this, but you’ve got your whole life ahead of you, don’t miss me too much,” he has to stop when a shiver wracks his body, there’s frost already creeping up the edge of the transparisteel, along the edge of that goddamn crack, “and Dad–”

His voice breaks, but he continues anyways, “I know I said I’d come back home, but I’m sorry I couldn’t do it. It’s okay though,” he shudders again, so violently it hurts. He rubs his fingers together to desperately to stop them from going completely numb, “I’m with mum now. This was my duty and I’m proud to have served the Resistance. Everyone just – win for me. Please. Force, I just – I don’t want to die here, kriff, I’m sorry. End recording.”

He takes a big shuddering breath and he wants to live, he wants to live so badly. He wants to fight, he wants to fly again, he wants to kiss Finn again and run into the lake and laugh with his friends and tinker with his mother’s A-Wing. The controls beep at him, 1% fuel remaining, he has a little more than thirty minutes left to live.

He pulls the life support mask up with shaking hands it takes one, two, three tries before it finally clicks into place on his helmet and not a second too soon because the X-Wing’s life support shuts down a minute later. The fuel cells have been completely drained, he’s in a dead ship drifting through space.

“Kriff it’s cold, why’d a jungle brat like me decide to go to space?” he mutters to himself, hunching as best he can in the cramped little seat and trying not to bite his tongue in his shivering, “you ever get cold out there, BB?”

_‘Negative, astromech droids cannot feel temperature. BB-8 wishes Friend-Poe was a droid right now. These conditions are extremely suboptimal for human survival.’_

“I hear you buddy,” he whispers, not sure if he’s actually really speaking or not because his lips are already numb, “I’m feeling pretty suboptimal right now.”

He doesn’t talk after that, doesn’t really have the energy for it, but BB-8 plays him his favourite song from Yavin and he tries to keep his eyes open. They start closing without his permission and it’s so cold, but he’s finally stopped shivering. It’s almost warm now, weirdly, and deep inside he knows that’s a bad thing, but he’s just sleepy, tired. His head slumps forwards and he tries to jerk backwards in an attempt to keep himself awake. He can’t even think about how he’s dying, how his body is slowly but surely shutting down. He doesn’t even have enough energy to be scared anymore.

_‘Friend-Poe don’t fall asleep! Don’t fall asleep! BB-8 will be so angry if Friend-Poe falls asleep,’_ his droid screams and he didn’t realise droids could sound so worried and angry at the same time, _‘stupid Friend-Poe, nerf herder, ranthar shit for brains! Do not fall asleep!’_

A smile ghosts across his face and he tries to say ‘I won’t buddy’ but the words don’t quite leave his lips. His body slumps forwards held up by the restraints and it would be so easy to fall asleep right now. It’s so warm, there’s nothing to be scared of anymore, the restraints digging into his chest are pretty comfortable actually. He can vaguely hear the sound of someone speaking in his ear, but he doesn’t understand what they’re saying. He closes his eyes and drifts off, flying away into space.

* * *

When he wakes up, he’s sitting under the tree in his garden. The tree in Yavin 4. He thinks he understands what’s happening.

He’s not cold anymore, he doesn’t ache in all the places that he’s grown used to aching over the years and when he looks down at his hands, they’re still like they haven’t been for months. He staggers up, the grass soft under his bare feet and the bark rough against his fingertips. He’s wearing civilian clothes, his mother’s ring still around his neck and he stares out into the forest. 

Someone beyond the treeline calls out to him and he steps forwards to follow, but something stops him. He hesitates at the edge of the forest, palm lingering on the trunk of his tree.

“Poe,” he spins around, eyes wide. He hasn’t heard that voice since he was a child and it makes everything in his chest tremble. Shara Bey is just standing there with the widest smile and her arms open.

“Mum,” he says as he runs to her, burying his face in her neck and breathing in her smell. It’s been so long he’d almost forgotten it, but as soon as it hits him tears well up in his eyes. It’s so familiar, like the jungle when it’s raining and engine oil and that old bottle of perfume in his dad’s bathroom that he’s just now realising must have been hers.

He’s crying, he can feel her crying against him as well and this all feels so strange, so wrong. He’s taller than her now, he has to look down at her face when they break apart instead of up, up, always up like he’s looking at the sky. And she looks so young, it scares him to realise that in just three years he would’ve been older than she ever got to be.

“My baby,” she whispers, stroking his face, hair, eyes that look so like Poe’s tracing every single part of his face, memorising it, “you’ve grown up so beautiful and brave. You’re so wonderful, Poe, so much more wonderful than I ever could’ve dreamed of.”

There’s something tugging on his gut, a voice behind him that sounds so familiar saying his name, but he just clings on tighter, tries his best to ignore it. “I missed you,” he says, voice small like he’s a kid again, “I needed you, growing up I needed you and you weren’t there.”

“I’m sorry, baby, but I’m here now,” she presses a kiss to his forehead, one to each of his cheeks and then a final one on the tip of his nose, “but you can’t stay for long.”

“Why?” he whines, clinging on tighter when she starts to fade away, “don’t go, don’t leave me again.”

“They need you, Poe, more than I do. You’ve got so much life in you still, you’ve got so much more to give,” she says sadly, wiping the tears from his cheeks, “I’m so proud of you, Poe. I love you.”

She glances behind him like there’s someone else there and smiles, mouthing something that almost looks like ‘take care of him for me’, but she vanishes before he can tell her he loves her back, before he can turn to see who she was talking to. He stands for a second in a blank empty space, floating, before he’s thrown violently back.

* * *

Everything _hurts._ He tries to groan, but his mouth feels like it’s filled with sand. Sand mixed with glass shards maybe. He’s lying down in a bed and there’s a mask on his face, he’s warm. He moves each one of his limbs and wriggles his toes to check they’re all still there and functioning. Mostly alright, he thinks, even though his toes are just a bit numb.

He tries to open his eyes afterwards and everything is just bright white light. He tries again after a little while and it’s just a tiny bit better. He squints trying to make sense of where he is. There’s someone slumped over on a chair to his left, someone else sitting on his right. He tries to speak again, but it comes out muffled and weird like his tongue won’t cooperate with him.

“Back to the land of the living again?” the person on the right says and that’s Leia’s voice. Why is she sitting by his bedside? Where even is he? “you’re on Ajan Kloss,” she says like she can read his mind and she probably can, “in the temporary medbay on Tantive IV. Everyone in the Resistance is safe, we all made it. Jess found you just in time.”

He garbles something else at her and she just laughs, stroking a hand across his face and pushing back the hair that had fallen over his eyes.

“Rest, Poe. I promised Shara I’d take care of you,” she says, and he obeys, eyes closing before she’s even finished speaking.

When he wakes up for the second time, he’s maybe a little less groggy. Everything still hurts, but this time just a little bit less and it only takes him a minute to be able to open his eyes. It takes a little longer for him to focus them, but now he can see Jess and Finn sitting on either side of his bed, both frowning at holopads.

“Hey,” he tries to say, voice garbled behind a mask. They jump up like they’ve been shocked, talking loudly and at the same time until he winces, “how long have I been asleep?”

“Two weeks,” Jess says, and she looks tired, dark circles under her eyes and her hair scraped into a messy ponytail, “and three days.”

“What happened?” he tries to say, and he hisses in annoyance at how his voice sounds, tugging at the mask over his mouth until Finn reaches over to help him take it off, “kriff – that’s annoying. Last thing I remember was BB-8 telling me not to fall asleep.”

“As soon as we got everyone down planetside I got into a shuttle and went to your last coordinates, but you’d drifted off almost to the other side of the planet and your ship was completely out of fuel. You were–” she stutters and he realises that she’s crying, tears dripping down her cheeks, “–you were just drifting, no life support, no heat. You had about five minutes of air from your flightsuit left, but you were already passed out from the cold. When I got you on the ship you weren’t breathing anymore.”

“Jess,” he holds her hand softly as she shakes, he can’t imagine what it must have been like to pull his cold lifeless body out of his X-Wing.

“I don’t know what Kalonia managed to do, but you were actually dead for a while,” she says shaking her head, “I thought you were gone, actually gone. BB-8 was almost out of juice but it kept on insisting to play me this recording you made and – kriff just the thought of you sitting there and waiting to die I–” she breaks off, unsure of what else to say and he squeezes her hand.

“I’m here now, though,” he says, trying to smile as much as he can, “you made it in time. I’m alright.”

“You nerf herder,” she hisses, rubbing her hands roughly over her eyes, “how are you the one just out of a coma and still comforting me?”

“I’m just magic like that,” he squeezes her hand as hard as he can, but that’s not very hard at all.

“I’m gonna go calm myself down, give you two a bit of time,” she suddenly says, standing up and striding out of the room before either of them can react. She’d always hated other people seeing her cry, used to lock herself in the fresher back in the Academy, leaving the rest of them waiting worried outside.

“Don’t worry about her, she’s stronger than you’d think,” Poe says, tilting his head to look at Finn and before he can even blink, he’s being kissed, hands cupping his face ever so gently.

“I wasn’t worrying about her,” Finn whispers when they break apart, “you’re the one who just woke up from a goddamn coma, Poe.”

“I know, but who would I be if I didn’t worry about all of you all the kriffing time?” he tries to joke, thumbing quietly at the tear tracks tracing their way down Finn’s cheeks, “I’m here now, I’m okay.”

“There was a few days where they weren’t sure if you were ever going to wake up again,” he murmurs against Poe’s palm, pressing a kiss to it, “they said you stopped breathing for too long and your brain might have died, even though your body was still alive you were just – you were already gone. But the general – she told us that she’d try one last thing, I think she used to Force to, I don’t know, reach out to you and it worked, you woke up, but only for a minute.”

“I think I was–” his mouth moves to form words that he can’t remember, all he can do is catch just the edge of a memory of that old perfume in his dad’s bathroom, a glimpse of the tree in his garden back in Yavin, “I was–”

“Poe?” Finn’s voice is soft and confused, his hands are grounding with their patterns of callouses that fit perfectly to a First Order blaster and are slowly but surely softening. One day Poe will hold his hands and they’ll be gone like they were never there in the first place, replaced with something new and beautiful and unknown. He smiles, trembling at Finn, his wonderful, stunning, brave Finn.

“It was warm, nothing hurt anymore,” he hears himself say, slowly drifting off to sleep again, “but someone kept calling my name.”

He wakes up again and it gets easier every time. He struggles a little bit, but he manages to sit propped up against his pillows with a quiet groan.

“Dameron,” Kalonia says, materialising from around the curtain like a ghost and he pretends he doesn’t jump just a little, “I wish for the day that you aren’t the first one in my new medbay every single time.”

“You’d get lonely without me,” he grins as she starts checking all of his vitals with a small hmph.

“I certainly wouldn’t, I have more than enough flyboys on this base to keep me in business,” she says as she shines a little light into his eyes and writes something down, “all your friends, for example, who insist on trapezing in here every day in their dirty flightsuits or your droid who always gets under everyone’s feet or your boyfriend who seems to have forgotten that he has his own room with his own bed in it.”

“But still I’m your favourite right?” he tries his best to smile winningly and she rolls her eyes.

“You’re by far my least favourite, Poe Dameron,” but her mouth twitches with a smile, “now let’s talk recovery plan.”

* * *

Ok so maybe Poe whines a little bit, but he needs the two-week break Kalonia forces him to have more than he’s willing to admit. Not that he’s really resting that much, whenever he’s not doing his physio, he’s in the hangar working on his X-Wing or in the command centre going through tactics. He’s just not wired to rest fully, ‘sit back and take it easy’ aren’t in his vocabulary.

At least he gets to spend his evenings with his nights with Finn now that they’re both on base full time and it’s wonderful. He gets to kiss his way down Finn’s body slowly just to make him squirm, take him apart bit by bit and Finn is a very fast learner in all aspects. Poe only has to show him things once or maybe twice before he manages to turn the tables on Poe, leaving him breathless and writhing against the mattress. He doesn’t even have to be worried about being sore when he’s flying, and he takes goddamn advantage of this rare little perk every single chance he gets.

There’s a lot of catcalling in the mornings when he walks into mess with that dreamy smile and bruises all down his neck that he doesn’t even try to hide. He enjoys seeing Finn duck his head down with an embarrassed and a little bit proud smile on his face after Poe kisses him dirty and messy right in-front of the pilots’ table.

It’s good, too good for the middle of an all-out war and Poe’s eyes are sharp on the weary faces of all his pilots, coming back from another dogfight with more holes in their formation than before. There aren’t enough people, there aren’t enough ships, there isn’t enough anything ever.

He worries constantly, about his friends, the Resistance, the galaxy as a whole. Before, when he was younger, it was all just a burn of righteous anger, but now he just feels tired, weary down to his fucking bones. He wants this war to end not for some abstract greater good, just so that he can protect his own galaxy in-front of him.

At night when he can’t sleep instead of thinking about flying into dogfights, he imagines a peaceful house on Yavin 4 with his friends and Finn piled in together, a huge tree growing outside. Flying for flying’s sake, soaring through the galaxy to see beautiful things and doing tricks to make children laugh, not to kill or hurt anyone anymore. It makes him feel so old, thinking like that, especially when he sees the way the fight still burns in Finn and Jess’ eyes.

“Do you ever just wish this would all just stop?” he asks Leia one day when they’re working late in the command centre, trying to get through the mission data that came in today, “that we could just – just go home and never fight again.”

“Oh every day, Poe,” she says sadly and there’s loss beyond words in her eyes, he remembers just what she’s sacrificed for this war (everything, her son, her husband, her homeworld, truly everything) and he thinks himself a little silly for asking, “but you have to dream of something beyond, you have to hope that there’s a life you can live afterwards.”

“Sometimes I feel selfish for thinking about things like that,” he admits and he’s not quite sure what’s bringing on his honesty, maybe the late night combined with the meds he’s still on, “because a lot of the time it feels like I’m not fighting for some big ideals anymore, I just want to be free.”

“What’s so horrible about that?” she laughs, putting down her holopad and reaching out to put a hand on his cheek, “we’re all fighting for different reasons, Poe, we can’t all be idealistic dreamers, now can we? Some people have to be fighting for their own futures or none of us would get anywhere at all.”

He leans into her touch just slightly, listening to her speak with his eyes closed and his body slowly relaxing.

“Your mother was exactly the same, Shara started off with the biggest bluster in the Rebellion, full of all this righteous fury and by the end all she wanted to do was make a better world for her and Kes and then you,” she trails off a little sadly, “we’ll get there, Poe. Just don’t stop dreaming.”

“Is that an order, general?” he grins, teasing again and she slaps him ever so gently on the cheek.

“Yes, it is, Commander Dameron,” she rolls her eyes, smiling as he salutes and picks up her holopad again, “don’t you ever dare stop dreaming. Now let’s finish these quickly if you want to see your bed before the sun rises again.”

* * *

So Poe for once listens to orders. He doesn’t stop fighting, doesn’t stop dreaming, doesn’t stop flying and coming back to the people who love him most in the whole galaxy (apart from maybe his dad). It’s hard, war is always hard, but it’s easier when you have people that you love and are ready to fight for, dreams of a future you need to be alive to see.

Rey brings Luke Skywalker back, the Resistance destroys one First Order base after another, Finn does the impossible and leads stormtroopers to turn their backs on the First Order. And Poe? Poe flies, he leads, he shoots and over the lightening filled skies of Exogol they finally win.

When tomorrow comes, he’ll mourn, he’ll cry for days over Snap, over the rest of his pilots that he couldn’t bring back. ‘I’ll live for you,’ he promises them silently because you can do more by living than by dying and he knows this now, more than it just being a phrase he repeats to himself.

It would be so easy for him to get lost in his own head right now, but people keep on running up to him to hug him and say, ‘Poe we’ve finally done it, we’ve finally won’. For now, he lets himself believe that the better future he was always dreaming of is finally here.

He kisses Finn, he pats BB-8, he sits with Iolo’s head on his lap and Karé’s on his shoulder, he laughs with Jess, he eats with Rey, he grins winningly at Leia, he holds hands with that brave Twi’lek from all those years ago who smiles at him with no fear in her eyes anymore. He stands surrounded by the victorious Resistance and when he closes his eyes there’s just a blur of green, warmth on his skin, the high tinkling noise of bells in the wind.

He opens his eyes to look at the people he loves. His hands shake, he has panic attacks, he wakes up screaming from nightmares, and he’s not any less because of it. He loves, he fights, he burns, and Poe Dameron thinks that maybe one day he’ll finally learn what it means to be alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaah this is finally all over!! thank u to everyone who has kept up w this while its been updating and everyone who's finished this monster of a fic! I hope the ending is mostly satisfactory! theres a few scenes that I wrote that ended up not being included bc they didn't flow well or fit and idk if anyone's interested but I will probably end up posting them at some point as well! if u enjoyed leave a comment and a kudo! and thank u for reading!!

**Author's Note:**

> ill be updating every friday and tuesday! if u enjoyed pls leave a comment and a kudo that would mean the whole world to me!


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